Jordon Chiles, seen here at the 2024 U.S. Championships, finds herself in the middle of an Olympics controversy not of her making.

Gymnastics -- the figure skating of the Summer Olympics

August 17, 2024

You just knew that the Paris Olympics would not end without a judging controversy, didn’t you?

This one involves American gymnast Jordan Chiles, who won the bronze medal on the floor exercises until she didn’t. It seemed her routine had a higher degree of difficulty than that of the original bronze medalist, Romania’s Ana Barbosu, and the U.S. filed an immediate appeal, giving Chiles the medal and devastating Barbosu. But then Romania appealed and Chiles was stripped of the medal, because the U.S. appeal was four seconds too late, even though video reportedly shows that it wasn’t.

The U.S. and Romania agreed to share the bronze medal, but the International Federation of Gymnastics said nothing doing, and now it’s off to the Swiss Federal Tribunal for the ultimate decision. In the meantime, it didn’t take the press long to uncover that Hamid G. Gharavi, who headed the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) panel that ruled against the U.S., had represented Romania in some arbitration cases. So not the most unbiased of judges.

On Friday, Aug. 16, Barbosu got the bronze medal — different from the one awarded at the Paris Games — and Chiles, still in possession of the bronze from Paris, vowed to seek justice.

NBC, the Olympics and American exceptionalism

August 6, 2024

The Olympics were just getting underway July 27 when the American swim team was reminded of how Australian swimmer Cate Campbell reveled in her country having had more gold medals than the United States (13 to seven) at the 2023 World Swimming Championships.

There has long been an intense rivalry between the swim teams that has spilled over into trash talk, but Campbell really went off on the cowbells in the stands that support Americans in the pool and even the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” If nothing succeeds like success, nothing irks like it either.

While the National Anthem comment seems petty, Campbell may have a point when you consider NBC’s cheerleading coverage of the Paris Games as we roll through the second week of competition….

Kudos... to me

April 6, 2018

I’m pleased to announce that I have been selected for a 2018 Folio: Top Women in Media award in the Motivators category. . (Folio is an online magazine about, well, online and print magazines.)

I’ll be at the June 7 awards luncheon at the Edison Ballroom in Manhattan, representing WAG magazine as editor in chief, and joining in a toast to 2018 Lifetime Empowerment & Achievement Award recipient Martha Stewart, WAG’s July 2014 cover subject. ...

In praise of housework

December 16, 2013

It was with infuriated amusement that I recently read Stephen Marche’s “The Case for Filth” in The New York Times (Dec. 8). Marche – a novelist, Esquire contributing editor and author of a forthcoming book on the end of the gender wars – writes that men in our post-feminist age are doing no more housework than they ever did. He concludes:

“The solution to the gender divide in housework generally is just that simple: don’t bother. Leave the stairs untidy. Don’t fix the garden gate. Fail to repaint the peeling ceiling. Never make the bed.

“A clean house is the sign of a wasted life, truly. Hope is messy: Eventually we’ll all be living in perfect egalitarian squalor.”

He’s kidding, right? I mean, this is some kind of post-modern snark, isn’t it? Read more