Anyone who has been through the wringer of the longest Democratic primary in US election history has come away with one undeniable learning - the blatant irresponsibility of the media. Using the crutches of “They say” and “Polls show” (”they” and “polls” being the anonymous aggregate of our fears and prejudices) the American mainstream media perpetrated and encouraged the most egregious misogyny, fanned the flames of racism and demonstrated the kind of bias one usually experiences in countries under the yoke of dictatorships.

But when a sports column demonstrates the same kind of feckless reporting, it makes one sit up and take notice. Ann Killion’s article in the San Jose Mercuty News today administers the shock right at the headline - “Swimmer Torres’ achievement hard to believe.”

Now Dara Torres, who qualified for the Olympic team last week at age 41, is no stranger to headlines. She made news 8 years ago when she had a comeback of sorts at age 33 after a seven year hiatus. Both times, she overcame competitors young enough to be her daughters. Even then, there were hazy rumors about her suddenly improved performance. Yes, her achievement is extraordinary. Yes, it does make you wonder. But to take your doubt and turn it into an article that completely relies on innuendo to support its argument is really poor journalism.

We’re all more skeptical, but we’re also smarter. We know better than to bite when someone points to their amazing training regimen as evidence that they are purely the product of hard work. We know that doping allows those kind of grueling training regimens. We know that money can buy not only enhanced training, but also pre-test testing and all sorts of edges and nuances. We know that a little storefront in Burlingame can’t be the only place in the United States that was ever peddling undetectable substances…..

The first exposure many Americans had to Olympic doping scandals were freakish female East German swimmers whose performances seemed too good to be true. And they were. We used to think it was just “them.” But the past few years have taught us the hard truth: American athletes are just as suspect.

Dara Torres is an Olympian again.

Incredible. Unbelievable. Exactly.

All Ms. Killion has to offer is the fact that East German athletes, once thought to be almost racially superior because of their Olympic prowess, were finally caught abusing performance enhancing drugs. Ergo, goes the logic, there is something fishy about Ms. Torres’ achievement as well. Once you eliminate the impossible, as Sherlock Holmes was fond of saying, what is left, however improbable, is the truth.

I see the attraction in posting an article of this sort. There is no downside. If Ms. Torres, who has asked for the most stringent doping tests in a bid to clear the smoke, does turn out to be a user, Ms. Killion would have been proved right. And if she doesn’t, well, Ms. Killion has cleverly covered herself by mentioning that tests today are by no means foolproof.

Why would a respected journalist put out a piece that is pure smear? Two explanations come to mind. One is that there is a real fire behind the smoke that Ms. Killion has generated, except there is no way of mentioning her sources. And this is the charitable explanation. The other is that the entire article is founded on a personal belief that women beyond a certain age are simply not capable of the kind of strength and stamina that gave Ms. Torres a berth on the Olympic team. ( The third, more mercenary explanation, is that of sensationalism, but I am going to give Ms. Killion the benefit of the doubt here.)

I hope, for Ms. Killion’s sake, that it is the first explanation that is true and her argument substantiated with facts in the near future. Even so, she has just downgraded herself to tabloid journalism and diminished the reputation of the paper she works for. A wet noodle goes to the sports editor as well, for letting this article through.

As for Ms. Torres, I wish her well. As a 41 year old myself, I would like nothing more than to believe that us middle-aged mamas are capable of just about anything. I am going to wait for the results of the test, hope for the best and then cheer myself hoarse when she competes.

Share This

They say a man’s home is his castle, but in the sleepy suburbs of America, that honor is reserved for his car.

My first car was a cheap but perky little Mazda Protégé in which, unencumbered by kids and safety issues, I zipped up and down I-680 at 100 miles an hour. That car reflected our lives at the time – simple, easy to maintain and without any frills – a perfect complement to our bare-bones apartment living, when any purchases over 20 dollars had to be approved by the spouse.

Alas. Having kids forces us to grow up and I soon had to graduate to a Ford Explorer – not perhaps the safest choice while traveling with infants – but the horror of being a minivan mom was just too ghastly to be borne. The SUV fit our need for space, having only one kid at the time, and the height made it convenient to load and unload diaper bags, car seats, strollers, grandparents… On solo trips I would test the turning radius and the flip-over tendencies of the vehicle, having consulted the lifeline on my palm on the riskiness of the venture.

Car ownership reached a nadir with the birth of the second child when we succumbed to the lush gluttony of the Honda Odyssey, a small house on wheels. Tricked out with a 6-disc CD changer, a back seat DVD player and a girth that allowed unfettered access to every seat , all it needed was a bathroom to call it home. In fact, most days, it was home, with nooks and crannies filled with food, drink, movies and books. When we parked in the garage, the kids would be reluctant to come out till nature called.

A tendency towards serial monogamy, unfortunately having to be sublimated in personal life, was allowed free rein as I ditched the motherly Odyssey for my latest car, the Toyota Highlander. With interiors designed along the lines of the stylish Lexus, the compact SUV is a joy to drive. All the bells and whistles are positioned perfectly inside; creating a synergy between car and driver that makes it a pleasure to haul the kids to soccer, TT, dance and piano. So it gets 20 miles to the gallon. Nobody’s perfect.

Blackberries and Bluetooth have made workstations out of our 4 wheelers. But there is another reason why we Americans love our cars. An SC Johnson Parent Taxi Survey found that 90% of parents spent 20 hours a week or more with their kids in the car. This kind of quality time with the kids is priceless. On trips to school and activities, my kids have been a captive audience as I question them about their studies, social interactions, fears and worries. I have discussions of philosophy with my son, explain morality to my daughter, eavesdrop as they bridge the 6 year gap between them with silly conversations. On the rare occasions when I am alone, I play my favorite music to relax  or educate myself with public radio. Car time can also be for catching up on reading with audio books and learning a foreign language through tapes.

The love affair we have with our cars would not be possible without the network of roads that borders on the magical to anyone arriving from India. In such calm seas, we are pilots of our little ships, in control of a small part of our day and our lives.

Share This

It’s bad enough that women have to work twice as hard as men. As the Red Queen tells Alice, “You have to run twice as hard to stay in the same place.” We also have to prove that while competing in a world that is already skewed against us, we have not lost our ‘femininity’. A headline in rediff.com today trumpets, ‘Indra Nooyi is first a mother, then a CEO’. My first reaction was outrage. Can you envision a headline that goes, ‘Donald Trump – first a dad then a pompous windbag tycoon’?

Poor Hillary Clinton is getting the same sort of media slant here in the US. Portrayed as cold, calculating, manipulative and aggressive, qualities that in a man would almost automatically make him eligible for power, she has had to dumb down her vocabulary, make her campaign pitch from her living room sofa and, in an attempt to soften her image, laugh inappropriately at various talk shows. “I may be a b****,” she seems to be saying, “but the operative word is ‘female’.”

The cultural contradiction between power and femininity is quite pronounced in the US and it seems even more jarring given that the feminist movement had such strong underpinnings in this country. Perhaps the mistake early feminists made was in burning their bras. In other countries where women have had an easier time reaching the pinnacles of power, they have done so by using their feminine roles as a tool to navigate the treacherous and sensitive realm of politics. Indira Gandhi portrayed herself as the ‘Mother’ of her country and Benazir Bhutto calls herself the ‘Sister’ to her people.

In some way, the assumption of these roles makes the strong women appear less threatening, not just to men but sadly, to their fellow women. Our cultural leanings make us more comfortable with female success if it couched in gender stereotypes. (In an interesting twist, Hilary Sips postulated in a presentation made in 1999 that too much femininity was as disruptive to the positive identification with power. The example she gave was of Canadian politician Kim Campbell who was photographed with bare shoulders – a case where the femininity completely negated the impression of power. Here too, we have seen the brouhaha caused when Senator Clinton ‘dared’ to show a hint of cleavage.)

So perhaps it is understandable that women in power take care to make their nurturing, maternal, gender specific qualities publicly visible. Hey, if that’s what it takes – we’re already coping with glass ceilings, unequal pays, double duty at work and home – if the way to get ahead is by being coy and soft and non-threatening, well, then, it’s what we’ve got to do.

Share This