Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
RIO DE JANEIRO — Gabby Douglas had just completed the last routine and last post-competition interview of her Olympic career, and her eyes were puddling up with tears after someone asked her about the latest wave of criticism she had caught back in the U.S. “I tried to stay off the internet because there’s just…
Robles, who is Mexican-American, said before the games that she wanted to inspire other Latinos. “As an Olympic athlete, I represent all Americans, but representing Latinos and Latinas is a great honor.” Robles’ medal is even more monumental considering that no American man has medaled since 1984, Deadspin noted. Only two American women ― Tara…
Photo: Paul Sancya/AP One recurring complaint about Deadspin is that we’re too mean. We’re certainly snarky, abstruse, and too easily pleased with ourselves, but the notion that we’re too mean is ridiculous. If anything, we’re not mean enough, because we occasionally have the sense to pull a punch on a target that’s too far down….
Members of the US Women’s National Soccer Team are pushing for higher pay. It is as traditional as the Olympic flame: For two weeks every two years, media outlets actually care about female athletes. Despite the huge fanbases rooting for women’s soccer, basketball, and tennis, it’s rare to see pro female athletes on TV—in 2014,…
NBC couldn’t be arsed to show you Simone Manuel’s monumental medal ceremony after becoming the first black American woman to win an individual swimming event, as they felt it was more important to air seven-hour-old footage of Russians doing gymnastics badly. Here, then, is Manuel (with Canadian Penny Oleksiak, who tied for gold) at her…
The Olympic diving pool on August 8 (left) and the Olympic diving pool on August 9 (right) Image: AP As the women’s synchronized diving teams took to the pool in Rio de Janeiro today, they were greeted by a strange sight. The diving pool had turned green overnight, while the neighboring water polo pool remained…
Athletes (not featured in the Daily Beast article) at the Olympics.Martin Bureau/AFP/Getty Images On Thursday morning, the Daily Beast published an exceedingly gross and bizarre article by a straight, married male writer who lured in gay Olympians through hookup apps for no particular purpose. The entire piece is an astoundingly creepy exercise in Grindr-baiting,…
My opinion: The Olympics are boring and bad and nobody actually cares about them. The professionalized version of sports events staged at the Olympics are in almost every case more competitive and more entertaining than their Olympic counterparts: No avid NBA fan cares about Olympic basketball; no Premier League follower gives a crap about Olympic…
Where all that Olympic money goes Its members call it, with an almost religious conviction, “the Olympic Movement,” or “the Movement” for short, always capitalized. At the very top of “the Movement” sits the International Olympic Committee, a nonprofit run by a “volunteer” president who gets an annual “allowance” of $251,000 and lives rent-free in…
This may seem strange, but i have often wondered which industry is more progressive promoting women: technology or men’s baseball. The answer may surprise you. At the Los Angeles Dodgers, in 2003, 21% of front-office executives, 44% of the managers, 56% of supervisors and 21% of directors were women. That is significantly higher than tech…