Gender Equity Still MIA

Back in the seventies (back when you could advertise cigarettes on television, a time fondly referred to as “the good old days” by tobacco companies), there was a brand of smokes aimed at female smokers.
The jingle’s tagline was “You’ve got your own cigarette now, baby, you’ve come a long, long way.”
First, for our younger readers, a jingle was a catchy song that extolled the virtues of a particular product, like “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke.”
Advertisers don’t use jingles anymore, instead opting for old Led Zeppelin tunes behind ads for Cadillacs.
Obviously, we weren’t particularly hip or sophisticated back in those dark ages, since most of us didn’t get the irony of a line that heralded the arrival of the fairer sex as a legitimate part of the political landscape, while still referring to women as “baby.”
Anyway, the point is that, in spite of this cancer-causing proclamation, women really haven’t come that far in the world of sports.
This is evidenced by the continuing examples of bad behavior by athletes of both sexes, but the vast disparity in the way they are treated.
For men, you can be involved in the murder of two human beings and still find a place in the Baltimore Ravens defense.
For that matter, coke dealers are welcome on the other side of the ball in Baltimore.
And don’t get me started on the Terrell Owens saga.
Baseball players can take illegal steroids like kids eat Fruity Pebbles and still be voted the league batting champion.
In fact, you can tell Congress that you’ve NEVER used steroids, then just grin and wink when you get a quickie ten-day suspension for having steroids in your system.
You can beat your wife, get caught driving drunk, assault fans, slap around camera guys, and smoke every flavor and variety of marijuana known to man and still get nothing more than a temporary forced vacation.
But let a cheerleader have just one alleged sexual encounter with another cheerleader in a bathroom stall, and they’re off the team for good.
This doesn’t sound fair.
Don’t get me wrong, I think that the cheerleaders in question should lose their job for embarrassing the team (even though they were off-duty at the time).
But I think the same standard should apply for every other member of the team.
If you get popped for a drunken orgy on a Minnesota lake, you should be on the unemployment line before that boat reaches the dock.
If you choke a basketball coach, the only court you should ever see again is the kind featuring a guy in robes.
To be fair, the Carolina Panthers organization is a little better than many of their NFL brethren, since their most famous transgressor no longer plays for the team.
However, Rae Carruth’s absence from the Panther lineup has more to do with the North Carolina penal system than the team’s standards.
The true test will come when Carruth comes up for parole.
If the team is waiting outside the prison walls with a contract laden with incentives for the number of non-pregnant guys with helmets he can take out the next time the Panthers play the Giants, you’ll know that the double standard lives even in a place named Charlotte.