“Hannah Storm in a horrifying, horrifying outfit today. She’s got on red go-go boots and a catholic school plaid skirt … way too short for somebody in her 40s or maybe early 50s by now…She’s got on her typically very, very tight shirt. She looks like she has sausage casing wrapping around her upper body … I know she’s very good, and I’m not supposed to be critical of ESPN people, so I won’t … but Hannah Storm … come on now! Stop! What are you doing? … She’s what I would call a Holden Caulfield fantasy at this point.”
For years now, I’ve wondered how Tony Kornheiser managed to get a gig at ESPN. A less athletic pundit would be difficult to imagine. Kornheiser’s entertaining enough, if you you like sports talk (which I detest as something akin to mental masturbation). His witty bantering with Michael Wilbon on Pardon The Interruption can be moderately entertaining, but I’d imagine you’d have to be the sort of American male who lives for sports talk to understand the appeal. No matter how you spin it, though, I can’t begin to understand what possessed Kornheiser to take on fellow ESPN talking head Hannah Storm and her (real or perceived) sartorial excesses. I have no idea how old Storm is, but, if you’ll indulge my obvious sexism for a moment, she could park her red go-go boots under my Tempurpedic any time. As a sports journalist, she could, and has, run circles around Kornheiser. The fact that she’s a woman in an overwhelmingly male-dominated field means that she’s had to work twice as hard just to be considered half as competent.
What Kornheiser may have been thinking seems beyond comprehension, assuming there actually was something resembling a rational thought process taking place. Why Kornheiser would take on what he saw as Storm’s sartorial “crimes” defies explanation. Besides the fact that he was belittling a fellow ESPN employee, he also gratuitously insulted one of the most respected and experienced women in sports journalism. If Kornheiser had been trying to position himself as a sexist ass, he couldn’t have done a better, more thorough job. Nice work, eh?
Yes, to his credit, Kornheiser apologized quickly, publicly, and he called Storm with a mea culpa. It was the least he could have done. ESPN was absolutely right to suspend Kornheiser, who could (and perhaps should) reasonably have expected far worse. The sad thing is that in this day and age, men still feel as if they have the absolute right to judge women by standards they would never dream of holding themselves to. It’s not as if Kornheiser has a career as a runway model in his future….
The more things change….
