Sally Jenkins over at the Wapo just blew my mind with this article about the 2016 Summer Olympics. The minute I read about NBC’s plan to time delay on the west coast (where I happen to live) I knew I wouldn’t bother watching. I was already pretty sure I wouldn’t because the last few Olympics I’ve been all “Where’s The Sports??”

Did I mention that I read Romance novels? Yeah. I write them, too. Just putting that out there.

I can get Olympic results for all the sports on twitter. I wish those tweets came with video because I would click the hell out of those. I love the Olympics. I even like lots of sports. True, I’m not a nutso fan of ALL the sports, but I do enjoy watching the very best compete in most all the sports.

The Olden Days, When the Olympics were Manly

Way back in olden times, when I lived in Berkeley and cable TV was brand new and cost me $10 a month, the Olympics came along, as they do, and they had this package where for some amount affordable for me, as a single lady underpaid in her job because, hey, lady person! (words overheard just prior to my leaving the then current job “We can’t pay [male person in a significantly junior position] you more than the lowest paid senior person.” And then my salary got named. Apparently they were later shocked that I was upset by being the lowest paid person and even more upset that I quit. Why didn’t I just ask for a raise? Well, to me, why didn’t you decide you should better compensate your lowest paid but highest performing person? To me, you don’t get to keep employees you fuck over like that. But I digress. One more digression. My office was right outside the men’s room and I was regularly treated to hallway conversations about blow jobs and discussions of the attributes of female employees. Apparently, they thought I was deaf.)

Please sir, may I have another insult?

Anyway I signed up for the Olympics plan way back because you could watch EVERYTHING LIVE and then again later when it was re-broadcast in a West Coast time zone. It was awesome. I watched all kinds of sports. Live and rebroadcast because a girl’s gotta sleep, right? And read and write romance.

And now, Sally Jenkins and the folks over at NBC are at last correcting me of my love of actually watching Olympic events and reading and writing Romance. I did not know those two things were mutually exclusive. I did not know that if you read and write Romance you are, de facto, not a sports fan who we all know would never ever in a million years enjoy romance reading, so the only way to show me and other lady folks the Olympics is to pretend the Olympics is a romance novel without the need to show any sports hardly.

Because, am I right? Romance reading is so horrible and readers of Romance are such an inferior class of lady persons,  and are so incompatible with anything like sports and the Olympics that when you’re trying to point out how badly NBC is fucking this up for everyone and especially women athletes that Romance readers are TOTALLY the correct simile here.

Romance reading = HORRIBLE STUPID NO ONE WANTS SPORTS IN THEIR STORIES. EWW!
NBC is trying to Romancify the Olympics OMG.

Harlequin is a Publisher of Books not an Attribute of The Uterus

The use of the word “Harlequin” as your straw man, oops! Straw lady, is the first sign that you have failed the intellectual rigor test of your comparison.

Here. Let me fix your complaint about NBC so it works.

NBC is pandering to what men WISH was true about women. That wish is based on stereotype, misogyny, and cliche. There is nothing in NBC’s programming anywhere that suggests they understand what kind of programming women would actually like to see. Women viewers, even viewers who read and write Romance, are also actual sports fans who would like to see actual sports in the Olympics and we would also like to see the female athletes treated in a manner that respects their personhood and their athletic achievements.

The only connection to Romance novels is in the minds of the idiots at NBC and, apparently, Sally Jenkins.