Women's Basketball and the Lively Sport of Gender Politics

This is an actual excerpt from an actual newspaper (the Washington Post) that’s supposed to report on actual news:

Item: President Obama hosts a basketball game at the White House on Thursday evening for Cabinet secretaries and members of Congress. Of the 15 participants whose names are put out by the White House, not one is a woman — even though Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was a college basketball player and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, who was in town for the afternoon, played high school ball.

…a perusal of a log of Obama’s athletic activities … found no women listed among the participants in the president’s various basketball, golf and fishing outings. Neither do women on the White House staff participate in the basketball games Obama’s male staffers, including David Axelrod, have on weeknights.

Is nothing sacred anymore? Must we politicize everything? The “controversy” emerges on the same day as the deciding game of the WNBA finals, and after my colleague Eammon Brennan pointed out a few days ago that bloggers have discovered a new buzz band: the WNBA. Should I feel guilty if I think that’s ridiculous?

The WNBA is fine, and I would never begrudge anyone’s right to compete, but I just don’t find the game particularly interesting. Is that an okay message to send? Or, like President Obama, must we all make a symbolic concession to the virtues of women’s basketball, simply because it exists?

I don’t know. I do know, however, that I’ll be skipping the WNBA’s blockbuster tonight, in favor of a Wizards-Mavericks preseason game. Sorry, but I gotta check out Gilbert’s knee for myself. Maybe next year, WNBA.