The Unquantifiable Gap in Women's Sports

Common talking points in arguments about prevailing gender inequalities in American sports typically zero in on big issues like unequal participation numbers, conflicting amounts and varieties of sports available to men and versus those available to women, and salaries for coaches and professional athletes. All of these points are important and germane to the topic of women’s sports; that said, these points are not as closely related to each other as many advocates and academics often believe them to be. Make a quick jump to the Women’s Sports Foundation’s website and you will find a page entitled “Pay Inequality Athletics” (hat tip to the Women’s Professional Sports blog). This page presents an array of bullet points that reel off numerous statistics that point out just how unequal the American sports landscape remains today. I’ll list a few:

• Although the gap has narrowed, male athletes still receive 55% of college athletic scholarship dollars, leaving only 45% to be allocated to women.

• Women's teams receive only 38% of college sport operating dollars and 33% of college athletic team recruitment spending.

• In NCAA Division I-A, head coaches for women's teams receive an average salary of $850,400 while head coaches for men's teams average $1,783,100. This is a difference of $932,700.

• For a WNBA player in the 2005 season, the minimum salary was $31,200, the maximum salary was $89,000, and the team salary cap was $673,000. For NBA players in the 2004-2005 season, the minimum salary was $385,277, the maximum salary was $15.355 million, and the team salary cap was $46 million.

Because disparities are most effectively expressed numerically, it’s tough to look at these statistics and still argue that women are getting a fair shake in both collegiate and professional sports. Numbers don’t lie—this why advocates like those at the Women’s Sports Foundation cite them. Taken at their face value, these statistics are more than enough to convince any rational person that there’s much more work to be done in athletics in order to level the gender playing field. Unfortunately, the numbers contained in these bullet points belie much larger philosophical issues, ones that transcend the numbers and, in fact, go on to show how unrelated these statistics are to each other and how grouping them together is (while good-natured) manipulative.

The common thread amongst most equality arguments—whether it is directly addressed or indirectly assumed—is money. Look again at the stats mentioned above. Scholarships, salaries, recruitment dollars… Whether the issue is high school, college, or pro sports, the elephant in the room is that men’s sports have access to more dollars. Sports, then, is absorbed into a larger gender inequality sphere of argument: economics. This is where the intentions of many women’s sports advocates become disingenuous: sports and economics, while often related, are not the same.

This is where a person’s own philosophical stance towards sports comes into play. Think of it this way:

- Sports as business, or
- Sports as pure athletic endeavor

This major philosophical difference is rarely, if ever, cited in arguments surrounding gender inequalities in American sports. Aside from the obvious reason that one outlook is quantifiable where the other is not, a big reason I think women’s sports advocates avoid the topic of ‘Sports as pure athletic endeavor’ is because the necessary requirement to realize this simple precept already exists: access. Salaries, endorsements and business models are not necessary requirements for those wishing to participate and experience the competitive thrill of athletic competition. Women (and men, for that matter) need only the chance or opportunity to a play a sport (high school sports, youth leagues, backyard games, anything) in order to realize the meaning and benefit of that sport. Clichés like “for the love of the game” originate from the very real fact that sports themselves have an unquantifiable inherent value, and it is that value that supersedes any monetary benefits that a lucky few athletes are able to earn. As I mentioned in my previous post, opportunities for women to participate in a wealth of different sports has never been higher. Title IX’s efforts to sniff out discriminatory practices in events like sports have been extremely effective. Most advocates would not deny this.

It is at the professional-level—where the bottom-line is not the unquantifiable spirit of athletic competition but the quantifiable value of the almighty dollar—that the gap separating men’s and women’s sports is at its widest. Professional sports—not sports in general—are pure business. And if a fair businessperson is to properly run an enterprise the size and scope of a professional sports league, this businessperson should adhere to the laws of supply and demand. All participants in this league (owners, management, coaches and players) should be paid based on the revenue they produce. This is how fair and successful businesses operate.

You see where I’m going with this. It’s a cold, black-and-white way of viewing the world; it’s a way in which I hate discussing things. But if advocates for equality in women’s professional sports are going to invoke monetary statistics, they must also address things like the amount of revenue a women’s professional sports league produces and the actual demand that exists for women’s professional sports in general. The former is often discussed and excused with arguments like “women’s sports do not receive the same marketing pushes as men’s sports, so of course they make less money…” There’s a lot of truth to such points. But the issue of demand is hardly addressed (at least from the research I’ve conducted) at all. How many people are demanding women’s professional sports? And which sports are there demands for?

I want to leave off on a similar note as my last post. How can women’s professional sports be transformed into a viable economic product, one that best utilizes the abilities of our best female athletes? With recent developments like the inaugural season of the Lingerie Football League, it’s easy to see how this question can be answered in exploitative, insulting ways. There are better solutions, like re-inventing women’s basketball by tailoring the game to the unique abilities of its players. I’d like to hear some of yours…

What's the Gameplan for Women's Sports?

Believe it or not, 2009 has been a vital year for women’s professional sports in the United States. I’m sure few of you—men and women both—have noticed, but the past twelve months have provided highlights and, unfortunately, many lowlights, all which will no doubt reshape the female pro sports landscape for the foreseeable future. Now rather than bore you with a list of events accompanied by explanations on their significance, I’m instead going to use the events of the past year as part of a broader look at women’s sports in general.

I like this topic because, when you really stop and think about it, women’s sports—especially women’s team sports—is a loaded feminist issue that, at a certain point, typically ceases to be discussed outside of academic circles mainly because, let’s be honest, it doesn’t generate much interest from either men or women. Plus, it’s sports, which in twenty-first century America (thanks in large part to women’s movement-inspired legislation like Title IX) is not really the bastion of political movement it once was. Access to sports for women, primarily at the youth, secondary and collegiate levels, gets broader and more diverse each year. There’s really never been a better time to be a young male or female athlete.

Unfortunately, this level of equality doesn’t extend to both male and female professional athletes. While I fully recognize that professional success is in no way the best or most accurate barometer by which to gauge the progress of gender equality efforts (this would be like saying record sales is the main determinant of artistic merit), I still feel that women’s professional sports’ inability to gain cultural traction raises questions about the root nature of women’s sports.

In late 2008, the Houston Comets, winner of the WNBA’s first four championships, went out of business. The team’s ownership and WNBA’s league offices were unable to find a new owner willing to pony up a paltry $10 million to purchase the franchise. This past October, about three weeks after the Phoenix Mercury won the 2009 WNBA championship, the three-time league champion Detroit Shock announced they were leaving the Detroit for Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The WNBA has only existed for thirteen seasons. The league, which was created and is effectively backstopped by the NBA, has received since its inception enviable amounts of corporate sponsorship and television exposure. Yet the two franchises that have won over half of the leagues titles either don’t exist anymore or have moved to another city. In both cases, the team’s home market (Houston and Detroit) was clearly not viable.

I don’t want rag on the WNBA, but the general consensus among sports writers and journalists is that the league’s business model is flawed. Rather than research markets that are open and excited about the prospect of supporting a women’s basketball team, the WNBA began by placing teams in markets with already existent NBA franchises, in effect killing each team’s ability to fulfill a city’s need or meet a specific market’s demand for professional basketball. The WNBA teams, in theory, would act like sister franchises, operating during the summer and early autumn, a kind of lead-in for the men’s professional season. This model has changed as time has gone by and teams have failed. Still, the WNBA’s operating philosophy mirrors that of the larger, more established NBA. A female professional sports league, in other words, attempts to operate in the same way, shape and form as it male counterpart.

As I previously mentioned, the WNBA’s flawed economic model has been roundly criticized. Interestingly, what has not been truly called into question is the actual game of women’s professional basketball itself. I’m talking about the size of the court, height of the baskets, things like that. It’s not such a novel concept. I know I’m not breaking new ground here. But an interesting side-effect of the Title IX-inspired growth of women’s sports is the tendency for the promoters and facilitators of these sports to simply put women on the same field of play, using the same rules, all in an effort to say, “See, women can play too.”

Basketball is the best example of this phenomenon because it is the most popular women’s collegiate sport as well as the female sport with the most well established professional operation. Why have serious discussions about actually creating a space that is custom-fit to a women’s game never been undertaken? The game of basketball was created by men as a team sport for men. The NCAA, NBA and FIBA institutionalized this male creation. Whether or not you love women’s basketball as it is or find it completely unappealing is irrelevant to the question of why a uniquely female version of the game of basketball has not been institutionalized by the NCAA, NBA or FIBA. Am I out of line to think that some of the WNBA’s woes are less economic and more because the on-court product just doesn’t inherently have the same amount of excitement that fans have come to expect from professional basketball? Am I out of line to think that actually tailoring a women’s sport to the unique abilities of women—rather than shoe-horning women into a sport tailored especially for men—would create a product that rivals the excitement of the men’s sport?

The viability of women’s sports at all levels is a very important topic. I have a lot more to say on this issue, but for now I’m really hoping to begin a discussion, to take get an idea of how people—both men and women, athletes and non-athletes—feel about the state of women’s sports. So let’s hear it!

The Case of Athletes and Rape

Reactions to the civil suit recently brought against Ben Roethlisberger by a former employee of Harrah’s hotel-casino in Lake Tahoe illustrate perfectly the inherent biases men and women have towards cases of sexual assault. These biases, and the copious amounts of baggage they carry, too often turn rape cases into exercises in futility—‘he said, she said’ arguments that devolve into hardcore character assassinations (usually it’s the victim’s character that’s annihilated) and, oddly enough, out-of-court settlements. This perverse form of due process becomes magnified when the case involves a professional sports star. Beloved professional athletes possess the double-whammy of seemingly endless means (money, top-notch lawyers, image consultants, spin doctors, publicists, etc.) and the benefits that come with large-scale public opinion. It’s not just the athlete’s family, friends and co-workers that think he is a great guy; the fan-base of an entire professional sports franchise (maybe even the fan-base of the sport itself) loves the guy as well, this includes fans and members of the media.

Interestingly, it’s the athlete’s endless supply of means to defend himself against rape allegations—not the athlete himself—that creates the average fan’s bias against the accuser. As our culture has elevated professional athletes to the status of iconic celebrity, the notion that rich athletes are now targets of exploitation and extortion has been canonized. Of course, there is plenty truth to this idea. Wealthy members of our society have always been and will always be the targets of desperate people. However, professional athletes, because of the attachments they engender amongst legions of people throughout the world, elicit an exceptionalism that isn’t afforded to other members of the high-income tax bracket. If a managing director at Goldman Sachs becomes a victim of identity theft, most people shrug their shoulders. Who cares? In fact, this day and age, a lot of people may even chuckle at the thought of some rich banker having to go through such an agonizing process. If the same situation occurs to a professional athlete, often there is an uproar, outrage, an entire SportsCenter segment devoted to the story. Fans will sympathize and give the athlete the benefit of the doubt (e.g. “Damn, that really sucks for him. All this hard work to get to where he is, and all some people want to do is tear him down.”) A fan’s defense of their favorite athlete is also directly proportional to nastiness of the crime. The more discomforting the accusation, the more staunch the fan’s unwavering support (unless, of course, the crime involves obviously innocent dogs).

Which brings me back to athletes and rape. When Ben Roethlisberger was first charged with rape earlier this summer, I remember discussing the initial reactions (or lack thereof) with Marie. Blogs and news outlets that chose to report the story (ESPN, the largest sports media empire in the history of the world, did not report the story for almost a good week after the story broke) harped on the fact that the plaintiff had filed civil as opposed to criminal charges. Additionally, speculation was already being made about the plaintiff’s past. Marie and I both knew that this was going to play out as predicted. Over the last month, the plaintiff’s mental state has been called into question, she’s been accused of extortion and pretty much all media outlets have written her off as unstable or, of course, vindictive, because ‘she really wanted it all along.’ Meanwhile, Roethlisberger has never been cast in any sort of negative light. He is too busy preparing for the upcoming season and how dare anyone try and distract him from working his job and living his life.

Let me be clear: I am not taking a side here. Like all people not directly involved with the case, I do not know all of the facts. And I have no stake in the outcome whatsoever. I am not writing off Roethlisberger as a rapist and the plaintiff a victim, and vice versa. What I’m pointing out here is the massive hole that comes part and parcel with both investigations of athlete rape cases and media accounts of these cases. As the lives of the accusers in these cases are dissected, deconstructed and judged (the judgment is almost unanimously: she’s crazy), the lives and mindsets of the athletes are not only not dissected, deconstructed and judged, they are always considered ideal. Roethlisberger is just “Big Ben,” the heart and soul of the Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers. Kobe Bryant is just a quiet family man who had a momentary lapse in judgment—hey, we all make those.

These idealizations are ironic when one considers the well-documented ego and hubris professional athletes. Ego is the one vital element never considered by fans in cases of athletes and rape. To people like Kobe Bryant and Ben Roethlisberger, they seriously doubt that a woman would ever say no to them. And if she did, she really didn’t mean it, right? She was just playing hard to get. Never once is an athlete’s potential for developing a pathological mental state due to meteoric rises in their fame, money earned and ego—their seeming endless set of means—mentioned or questioned. Never. Women would never say no to the advances of a star athlete, just as fans would never question the star athlete’s word.

The lesson here is that in cases of rape, what we must always call into question are our initial reactions. As cases involving athletes prove time and again, we all have serious biases when it comes to dealing with issues as unsettling as sexual assault. And so rather than deal with these issues, we just write them off in favor of the person we like best. We’ll simply side with the athlete we so know and love, scorching the reputation and credibility of any accuser who comes in the athlete’s path. Rape is no joke. And to treat it in such a flippant fashion is irresponsible and harmful. The moment biases like this creep up in your mind, stop yourself and ask simply, “What about the athlete’s state of mind; what about his credibility?” It’s that simple. More often than not, you know what you’ll realize? Despite your knowledge and passion as a fan, you really don’t know the athlete as a person at all, just as you don’t know the accuser. If we are going to demand that the Justices of our highest court approach each case without bias, shouldn’t we do the same?

The Emotional Roller Coaster That is a Guy Watching the Game

The Date: Saturday – October 12, 2002

The Place: Hanover, NH

The Game: (9) Florida State Seminoles at (1) Miami Hurricanes (live on ABC)

Until I met my beautiful wife, I’ll readily admit that the game of football (American football, for our international readers) was my life’s primary passion. It’s a product of where I grew up. Beginning in 1970s, the state of Florida evolved into a (some would say “the”) hotbed of football talent. As the game moved from one of bulky players and slow, ball-control offenses to one of speed and athleticism and wide-open play, Florida high schools began producing the fastest, most talented and most sought-after players. As a result, the state’s three largest college football programs—Florida, Florida State, Miami—outgrew their regional status and stormed the national scene, becoming household names (the Big 3 have won 10 of the last 25 national championships). At the professional level, the game grew to a level where Florida now boasts three NFL franchises. In lockstep with this tremendous growth in the game itself, of course, has been the growth in the amount of football fans throughout the state. Sure, there’s plenty of golf, basketball, baseball, horse and auto racing, - even hockey - all across the state, but, make no mistake, Florida puts football first. Everything else is a distant second.

I was born in Florida in 1981 and lived there until I left for college in the fall of 1999. During my childhood, I became an avid fan of both the University of Miami Hurricanes and the Miami Dolphins of the National Football League (see, in Florida, all kids choose, usually at birth, a college and pro team to which they swear, often for life, their unwavering support). But I was more than just your average rabid fan. I was also a football player: a good one, too. After seven years at the youth-level, I played three solid years of high school football (the missing season coming during my tenth-grade year, when I suffered a torn ACL in my right knee; said injury occurring, you guessed it, during football practice). My success at the high school level prompted me to travel 1500 miles north to the state of New Hampshire to play two ill-fated seasons at Dartmouth College. A myriad of factors—most notably, mounting injuries and dissatisfactions with the team’s coaches and system—contributed to my decision to quit the team after only two years. The unfortunate end of my playing days, however, allowed me to spend my last two years in college purely as a fan. Together with my best friends (two of which also shared the same ‘this isn’t really how I planned it’ end to their lives as football players), I was able to enjoy football as I had when I was a precocious, stat-memorizing, favorite-player-emulating kid: emphatically. This involved lots reading, watching, arguing, the whole gamut. As fate would have it, my final two years of college also coincided with the resurgence of my beloved Miami Hurricanes.

This is where our story really begins…

By the time Florida State Seminoles traveled to the Orange Bowl in Miami in October 2002, the Hurricanes were in the midst of a 27-game winning streak. Winners of the 2001 national championship, the ’02 version of the Canes was nothing short of dominant. The team featured a roster full of future NFL stars like Andre Johnson, Vince Wilfork, D.J. Williams, Kellen Winslow, Jr., Jon Vilma and the late Sean Taylor. And they had swagger!

For a fan, it’s amazing how important a role things like attitude and demeanor play into one’s level of attachment to a team or a player. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, as the team grew into a national power, the Hurricanes became famous (or infamous, depending on who you ask) for their brash, ‘I don’t give a fuck’ nature: wild celebrations after big plays, arriving at opposing stadiums dressed in army fatigues, t-shirts emblazoned with ‘Catholics versus Convicts’ the week leading up to a game against Notre Dame. Off the field, the team always seemed to match the larger than life presence they imposed on opponents on the field. For a white, middle-class aspiring football star growing up in one of the more redneck parts of the state, I found this type of attitude appealing at a young age because, for me, the Canes exhibited an outspoken confidence (an arrogance that didn’t take itself too seriously) that I just couldn’t recreate in myself on or off the field. I was a fairly quiet kid, and I was always very good at sports. I’d like to think I had room for a bit unserious arrogance. However, trash talking never came naturally to me. But being a Canes fan sure did. So, in a sense, the Canes became a proxy. I could wear my Canes shirt to school, talk shit to friends who followed Alabama or Florida State, talk up the Canes and their successes, run the ball like Edge James; just proclaiming my fandom for the Canes allowed me to co-opt some of their attitude, their swagger. The Canes really became a part of my personality and life in a very rational way.

So what’s with the seemingly irrational and unhealthy emotional investment in a single game?

The Miami-FSU showdown began with the great Willis McGahee scoring on the Canes first possession, capping off a 90+ yard drive. I was sitting on a couch in my buddy Bob’s dorm room. A group of five of us watched the Canes march down the field and score the way they had for almost two full seasons. It all seemed so easy and preordained. Another friend of mine, Joe, quickly proclaimed, “Well this game is over.” Then why did I have a knot in my stomach? In fact, why had the knot in my stomach grown larger with each passing game? I watched the Canes throttle teams each week with sweaty palms. After a half decade of attrition—for a variety of reasons, the Hurricanes had it rough in the late ’90s—my team was finally at the pinnacle, back on top. And I mean way on top. People were already calling the ’01 squad the best college football team ever. My team was back on top. But as the winning streak grew, I grew as a basket case.

The Canes, of course, stall. Before I know it, the score is 17-7 in favor of FSU in the second quarter. It’s an early game, a noon kickoff, but I’m already a couple beers deep—anything to calm my nerves. The Canes get their shit together, scoring a touchdown just before the half, but they were still down 17-14 and, for the first time all year, a truly ominous feeling overcame me. I couldn’t even be in the same room as the game.

Across the street from our dorm the Dartmouth Big Green, the team I had unceremoniously quit a season before, were taking on the Yale Bulldogs at Memorial Field. Nothing better to take your mind off of the annual UM-FSU showdown than watching a couple Ivy League cupcakes square off. At the time, I was pretty bitter towards Dartmouth football. As I mentioned earlier, things didn’t really go as planned between me and the team. And when a person is driven to hate something that they have participated in and dedicated themselves to and loved every year for thirteen years straight, one holds on to a bit of anger in the aftermath. Long story short, the absolute last place I ever wanted to be on an autumn Saturday in Hanover, New Hampshire was a fucking Dartmouth football game. But there we were. My friends indulged me enough to make the trek to the stadium and together we watched Dartmouth pull out a rare win.

This little sojourn was only temporary and offered little respite from the stresses that awaited back at the dorm. We returned to the room just as the Miami-FSU game entered the fourth quarter. The first play of the fourth quarter: an FSU touchdown. The Seminoles were now up 27-14. The Canes just didn’t look like they had it. Around this point, I began pacing endlessly, from couch to bed to desk chair to hallway and back. I’m not a loud screamer, not one of those assholes who rants and raves with each play. I know football. I know it well. So as a game progresses, my emotions and feelings slowly build to match what I feel the outcome of the game will be. It’s a unique elation when things go well. It’s a terrible torture when it goes bad. No amount of beer or consoling words from my friends (who had their own teams to think about—this was, after all, an early game) could stop me from turning my hairs gray. By the time Kevin Beard caught a Ken Dorsey touchdown pass about halfway through the fourth quarter, cutting the Seminoles lead to 27-21, I knew it was too little too late. I wasn’t hopeless—I didn’t proclaim the game lost (again, I’m not one of those assholes). But in my heart, I felt the weight of that 27-game win streak. Just as I know the Canes players did. It took so much effort to get those 21 points on the board. And now there was just over seven minutes left. I just didn’t think they had enough time or energy.

But the defense quickly stopped the Florida State offense. Suddenly, the Canes had the ball with plenty of time. Sure, they were 70+ yards away from the end zone, but at least they didn’t have to throw up junk passes or run a two-minute drill. What followed on the first play this Miami possession was something I’ll always remember. Dorsey drops back, lets the pass rush come at him; he drops a perfectly placed screen pass to Willis McGahee. McGahee turns up field and, in a flash, he’s gained 68 yards! (please see the photo above) I was leaping up and down and screaming so hard that even my friends, who were fully attuned to my emotional state, shot annoying glances in my direction. A play later, the Canes score and it’s all of a sudden Miami leading 28-27.

Then the Canes defense held again! And now the blood rushed to another part of my head. I felt dizzy. This team was not going to lose! All they needed to do was run out the clock by getting a couple first downs. But, as life sadistically loves to have it, the Canes could not manage a first down and had to punt, giving the Seminoles one last opportunity to take the game. No problem—Miami has one of the best punters in the country. The Canes would pin them deep, make a couple tackles and call it a day. But our punter, Freddie Capshaw, shanked the punt. “Are you fucking kidding me,” I screamed, absolutely dumbfounded. The guy who could nail 40+ yard punts in his sleep kicked the ball three yards, giving the Seminoles the ball practically in field goal range. This roller coaster ride was about the end with me getting sick. Four plays later, there’s one second left on the clock and the Seminoles were lining up for a 43-yard field goal.

For those of you unaware of the history of the Miami-FSU football rivalry and the unique place game-ending field goals play in the series, please take two minutes and watch the video here.

It sounds almost anticlimactic, but the field goal was no good. The Hurricanes won. I immediately jumped into the air and hugged my friends. They were smiling and laughing, happy (as funny as it sounds) for me.

The remaining part of that day and weekend are to this day a blur. No, this isn’t due to a drunken celebratory haze. I was hungover from the game. I was so involved, heart and soul, in each play that only a couple hours after that field goal sailed wide left I was back in my room, taking aspirin and trying to sleep. Ironically, at a time when I should have felt absolutely elated—the Canes had just beaten the Noles, their biggest rival!—I felt emotionally drained and physically like garbage.

Men’s propensity to place sports at the center of their lives, to read the up-and-downs of their team into the up-and-downs of their own day-to-day isn’t a recent phenomenon. It’s practically cliché. Nick Hornby managed a whole memoir out of the idea. What often gets lost in all this talk of men and their sports obsessions is how the roller coaster that is a guy watching his team play a big game mirrors the way women are often charged with reacting irrationally to situations that supposedly don’t merit such responses. You know, stuff like getting intensely angry because another woman wore the same dress. Guys like to stereotype women as too emotional because of things like this, label them drama queens. But, really, how different are a woman’s outbursts or internal angers at supposedly benign events from my incredibly tumultuous adventures watching football games? It’s a simple question—a real ‘no shit’ one—but still important.

As men continue to stereotype women and their supposed emotional irrationality, and some women choose to stereotype men and their overblown attachments to sports, it’s easy to forget that these emotions are both two sides of the same coin. In sharing a little bit of my own personal history, by showing the foundation of my attachment to a football team I care about dearly, I want to get your minds working. I want you to search for the rational basis in your “irrational” emotional roller coasters. And, more importantly, I want you to consider the rational bases in the seemingly “irrational” emotions of others.

What Does The Birdcage Have to do With Michael Vick?

What does The Birdcage have to do with Michael Vick? Think back to the movie for a moment. Think back to the story: the well-meaning parents of a young man want to make a good impression on the parents of his new fiancée. Where’s the conflict? The well-meaning boy’s parents are gay men (Robin Williams and Nathan Lane) who run a drag cabaret and the fiancée’s parents are conservative politicians. At their son’s request, the gay couple reluctantly decides to pretend to have a traditional home. Nathan Lane, the club’s star performer, needs to appear in drag for a whole new audience for a whole new reason: to play the part of the loving housewife. Of course the charade can’t go on forever, and toward the end of the movie Nathan Lane finally reveals that he is indeed a man in drag and half of a loving gay couple. The conservative politician’s reaction is priceless: “You can’t be Jewish?!” The real concern is their queerness. Classic misdirection of concern; classic understatement of importance.

Are you getting deja vu yet?

On August 17, 2009 Public Policy Polling asked a sample of 909 American voters whether or not they supported Michael Vick’s reinstatement into the NFL. Overall, 49% of Americans supported his reinstatement while 34% did not and 17% were unsure. Take a closer look:

There is an even stronger divide along racial lines with African Americans supporting reinstatement 80-9 but whites by only a 42-29 margin.

Here are some more numbers for you: the team that prosecuted Vick recommended that he serve 12 months in prison. The man was sentenced to 23 months and served 18 of them. Really? What else did Vick do wrong to warrant all those extra months added to a recommended 12 month sentence?

There’s your quantitative data.

Here’s some qualitative data: People are still making a gigantic deal out of the dog abuse. I mean protesting and boycotting across the country in person and in print. I mean a Michael Vick chew toy (because there’s a market for people who want the man torn apart and devoured in effigy). I mean three billboards worth of hatred on the roads leading to Lincoln Financial Field where Vick will play with the Philadelphia Eagles.

I’m not saying it’s okay to abuse animals – of course it’s not – but that’s beside the point I’m making here.

My point is, in light of the above information, the reactions to Vick’s reinstatement do not seem to fit a crime worth only a 12 recommended months of federal time. There has to be something else going on here to account for the discrepancy between the crime he committed and the societal punishment the man’s been dealt. And what’s with that racial divide Public Policy Polling pointed out?

Don’t pull a Birdcage, people. Don’t misdirect your more substantial concerns – the ones that really bother you, that are the most uncomfortable to talk about and to recognize in yourself – to the dog issue. The disproportionate importance given to the dog issue gives the lie here. If your issue is with race, come out and own it. Don’t blame it on the dog.

If what is underneath this absurd reaction against Vick is resentment that a young black man has an amazing God-given talent, that he was the #1 draft pick in 2001, that he enjoyed being the top-earning athlete in his sport, that he did something fantastic with his life while you fettered away in a cubicle somewhere compelled to spread your misery far and wide, own it. Come out and say it. If you’re complicit in the epidemic of young black men (Vick’s still in his 20’s, he counts as young) being disproportionately sent to prison for disproportionately severe sentences, own it. If you can’t be honest with yourself, who else can you be honest with?

People should not give in to the temptation to use dog abuse as a cover for their race issues. They shouldn’t pounce on the dog issue as their proof positive that they were right all along, that “Vick didn’t deserve any of his success.” The people who determine whether Vick ‘deserves’ to be in the NFL are in the judicial system and the NFL itself as his employer. No one never screws up, no matter how fantastic his job is. And the dog issue is weak compared to the race issue.

What makes the dog issue weak is that it’s too easy. Everyone loves their pets, and the attachment people have to them is part of what puts pet ownership so close to our hearts. That’s easy to agree on. Everyone can agree that hurting animals is bad. (Sure, there are a precious few outliers with the dog issue agreement, but that’s spit in the ocean.) It’s also easy to speak for animals that can’t speak for themselves and contradict what we say. That (among other things, some of which I will return to below) makes the dog issue, one that legitimately and understandably bothers and makes uncomfortable tons of people an easy one to tackle by comparison to race.

Racial issues also bother tons of people and make them uncomfortable, but our relationships to race are not as rosy as those of pet ownership. In dealing with race, we’re no longer dealing with a voiceless group in need of someone to speak for them. We’re dealing with people who can speak for themselves, and do. There’s a reason race has achieved the monumental institutional status it’s achieved in this country. To compare dog abuse to race in size and importance would be like comparing the Washington Monument to a thimble. It takes some serious denial to turn away from race and say, “No, I think the dog issue is more important than my fellow human beings. I don’t have as complicated a history with dogs. I consider myself their benevolent master. Good thing there’s no racial undertone in that last sentence or I’d have a tough problem to deal with!”

Don’t pull a Birdcage on Vick. And while you’re at it, don’t pull one on anyone else either.