The subject of today's diatribe is "babes". Actually "babes in a bracket" to be more precise.
A Little Rock sports radio station that broadcasts to all corners of the state through affiliates started a little fluff promotion several years ago called the "Babe Bracket" which is exactly what it sounds like. The brains behind the March Madness-like showdown, which slots female television personalities into a bracket with callers to the station voting on each pairing until an ultimate babe is crowned, and the concept itself has taken a few media hits in the past week.
Let me acknowledge going in that this is going to be a lose-lose subject. So instead of proclaiming a "right" answer and picking sides, let me play Devil's advocate with the hope of getting out of this one alive.
The bottom line? They have been doing this business since 2005 but suddenly in the year of Harvey Waifbanger and #metoo, it suddenly has become a "thing".
We have reached the point of no return when it comes to political correctness that there is none. Nothing is correct when it comes to partisan and liberal politics.
It's all in how you look at it.
Is this a dumb promotional idea anyway? Undoubtedly, but for twelve-years, it was just blown off as harmless fun...a bunch of frat boys getting together and hooting and hollering about the televison "babes" on the radio and pandering to a male-dominated demographic.
The guy who started the thing and still runs the contest is, in my opinion, kind of a jerk anyway. He's been making the rounds his week claiming that it's not about "looks" but rather about "promoting these women journalist and their accomplishments". Of course, television stations rarely hire a butt-ugly on-air personality and if they did, I doubt that there would be a "play-in" game added to the bracket anyway. No "at-large" with an emphasis on the "large" part included.
So let's call it what it is. Hormone-driven, randy sports talk radio listeners panting and breathing heavily over heir favorite weekend anchor and/or action news reporter. It is disingenuous for anyone to claim anything else. It's also the same contest with the same format that has led to the same outcome for the past twelve years.
What took all these social justice warriors so long to get pissed off? Or better yet, at what point did any of the women throw their hands up in the air and demand they not be included in the bracket. They didn't, and a lot of them participate by going on the show and doing interviews and hyping the hoopla on their personal social media pages.
In fact, I have a friend who works in television in the Little Rock market,. He tells me that one of the "babes" that worked as his station in 2014 was so devasted that she DIDN'T make the bracket that she cried every day at work for a week and finally got out of the business.
Television stations in the news business are like that old television commercial...they don't drive no ugly truck.
If they take applications for a new weekend "weather girl" and applicant "A" is a 24-year-old bubbly blonde with a great smile and other "assets" with an online degree in broadcasting from Diploma Mill University while applicant "B" has a double Masters degree in journalism and meteorology from William and Mary but looks more like William than Mary, guess who is going to get the job?
It ain't William.
Look. For about eighteen years until my oldest daughter moved out, my son and I were always on the sort side of a 4-2 vote on everything. Wife, two daughters, and a mother-in-law...we lose.
When the son went off to college after the oldest daughter moved out, it was still 3-2. When the youngest daughter got married, it was 2-1. My mother-in-law passed a few years ago and I still get out-voted because the wife has declared a tie goes to her.
But I also think anytime during that run, you could ask any of the four and they would tell you that no one is more supportive of and respectful to women who earn it than me.
And you earn it by being the best that you can be at whatever you decide to be. Be that a Mom, a Mi-Mi, a Mee-Maw, a television journalist, a waitress, an astronaut, a physician, a convenience store clerk or the night manager at Burger King.
Rest assured, the "Babe Bracket" is on its last legs, and probably rightly so.
Rico Suave will probably pull it off once again this year because he has an ego like a Fort Smith Board of Director member, but I'm betting this is an idea whose time has past whether he, I, you, or anybody else likes it.
That's the world we live in today. We always want to kill the messenger about a dozen years too late.