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A guest post from Politico writer Lisa Lerer:
Obsessive White House watchers can't stop talking about an ESPN article
on the political pecking order of presidential basketball games. Author
Wright Thompson breaks down the sociology (and some of the psychology)
of how power works in Washington.
"What's the hottest invite in Washington?" former Clinton press
secretary Dee Dee Myers asks in the article. "Yeah, it's great to go to
White House state dinners or Stevie Wonder kinds of events. But what's
the sine qua non? It's a pickup game with Obama. That's the inner,
inner, inner sanctum."
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All over town, people are playing hoops—in newly started leagues, in...
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In honor of college basketball's March Madness, Best Week Ever is running a supremely satisfying ‘90s Movie Madness competition, in which 64 movies, seeded and in brackets, face off against one another so users can vote to determine which is the most quintessentially ‘90s. If that sounds complicated, it boils down to this: Which is more ‘90s, Reality Bites or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Clueless or Showgirls? Billy Madison or Silence of The Lambs? Friday or Point Break? You know you have an opinion.
The brilliance of the Best Week Ever contest lies in both the accuracy of the seedings, i.e. the rank BWE assigned to the various ‘90s films (For example, Clueless, Billy Madison, Encino Man, and American Pie are the No. 1 seeds), and the unerring understanding of '90s-ness voters possess. (For example, in the third round of play, Encino Man fell to No. 8 seed She's All That, because, well, it obviously deserved to.) Voters' uncanny comprehension of what makes House Party so much more ‘90s than Varsity Blues buoys my spirits: We Americans may not agree on much, but at least a certain segment of the blog-reading population, well-versed in middling cinema, intuitively understands that flat tops mattered more to the decade than James Van Der Beek. This is a good sign.
As with trivia contests, this competition takes useless knowledge—real familiarity with scores of mostly lame movies—and makes it momentarily valuable: It really is good I’ve seen Half Baked, if only so I know for sure that Singles is that much more '90s than it. Movie Madness also instructs us on how to watch the real March Madness: To enjoy a sporting event, you have to pick a side. It can be for the silliest reason-a guy on one team is wearing sports goggles. Aww—but if you don't have a dog in the race, the race is really, really boring. If you can care as much about Michigan State winning as Clueless, this weekend's Final Four just might be fun. If you can't, rent Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead instead, because it's definitely been a long time since you've seen that one, and, lord, it is really '90s.
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While I enjoy March Madness for the entertainment of watching the earnest, last-gasp efforts of talented young athletes, I didn’t fill out a bracket for the men’s tournament this year. And even though I consistently watched one of my best girlfriends play hoops throughout college, I didn’t even consider filling out the women’s bracket. Martin Johnson has an interesting piece in the Root telling me why. I pretty much exhausted my knowledge of college basketball while recording our weekly podcast (give it a listen; you can tell). But I buy his analysis—that there is some weird stigma still attached to women’s basketball in particular that is not present for say, women’s tennis, or women’s swimming, or even women’s golf.
Here’s my armchair psychologist’s take: The female players are not overexposed. Call it the Imus effect? Basketball is all long shorts and sweatbands—even male athletes have only their arms (sexy!) to rope with elaborate, distinguishing tattoos. During last year’s Olympics in Beijing, there was much to-do about half-naked women athletes winning press coverage not for their high level of achievement but for their (obviously) slammin’ bodies. And anecdotal experience suggests that hot, female “on-the-court” television anchors are as much of a draw for men’s sports-watching as the games themselves. Perhaps dudes, subliminally accustomed to a little tittilation with their sports fix, take a pass on lady hoopsters, and speculation—and general spectatorship—for the female Final Four falls.
That’s not terribly well-reasoned as much as it's provocative. (Though, searching around to try to pin down how many more men watch sports than women, I found that “Since the 1999 regular season, nearly every NFL team has implemented a series of classes meant to educate female fans. NFL 101 Workshops for Women invites women to increase their understanding of football's history, offensive and defensive strategies and how to decipher game officials' signals.” Nice.) Any other theories?
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