Girly Sportsmanship

I recently posted a blog piece (on May 8) about Sara Tulchosky and a very notable incident in a college softball playoff game - an act so definitively "sportsmanlike" or "chivalrous" that it was picked up by pretty much every national media source you can imagine. With so much focus on a simple act of decent behavior, it seemed like a good indication of just how hungry the public is for an uplifting story from the world of sports - rather than another "police blotter" piece about the latest athlete to get arrested for rape, drug possession or animal cruelty.

Still, even as this story was being covered in papers from the LA Times to the NY Times, there were plenty of people scoffing that this wasn't a real sports story - because something like this could only happen in a girls' league, and only girls would be soft enough actually do something nice for an opponent.

Stephen Colbert gave us a great satire of this sort of attitude when he claimed that girls' softball, with its inherent decency and chivalry, was the fourth largest threat to national security in his regular "Threatdown" on Monday, May 12. (Of course, "bears" were number one.) Take a listen to the audio of Colbert's Threatdown.

It was a marvelous comedic jab at the ridiculous notion that only little girls are capable of being decent to each other on the playing field.

Visit the Colbert Report Website to enjoy more of his biting satire!