Hi Marty,
Your show this morning with regards to Ben reminded me of my pet peeve with the sports world and the media. I am a die-hard Steeler fan, and a great sports fan in general. I am the mother of 3 teens, two of which are boys who have grown up reading the sports page of the PG/Trib before reading anything else. I once emailed the PG and suggested they consider placing their sexual ads in another section of the paper so that our children can read the sports page without seeing ads for Great Sex, Nightly Dancers, Strip Clubs and more. What message do our kids get from this? It’s plain and simple: sports, sex and booze go hand-in-hand, and women are just sexual objects. It is further reinforced on TV during a game. You can’t watch a game without seeing ads of women drinking, dancing and then getting picked up by some stud with a beer in his hand. So, if we expect our athletes to live a “clean” life, perhaps we should expect the NFL/NHL/MLB/NBA to do the same by airing “clean” commercials during games. Big Ben’s getting crucified for his behavior of excessive drinking and sexual conduct in GA. Someone on your show today called in and suggested that perhaps something happened in his childhood to make Ben act disrespectul to women. What if he just grew up reading the sports pages and saw all of these ads for women promoting their sexual abilities? He then makes it big, has the money to spend, and drinks and picks up girls in bars. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? Perhaps the Leagues all need to clean up their images. Start from the top, as the saying goes. But, then again, who is going to turn away the millions from the advertisers?