Editorials/The Spotswoodian Pronunciamento/East German Jockettes

...Small numbers of women attend sports events, and neither I nor any woman I know can understand what they go to see...

...The reason there is unequal interest in men's and women's competition is that sports is a male enthusiasm...

...Large numbers of men fill the stands, and they want to see men...

...That has been the American way, or at least the American Liberal's way, for over a decade...

...Despite the empty arenas, feminist basketball players demand the same accommodations as their male counterparts...

...In a case involving a Marxist professor's allegations of libel against the columnists Rowland Adapted from RET's weekly Washington Post column syndicated by King Features...

...Several days prior to this decision, a judge in our nation's capital handed down an opinion on freedom of expression that might well make every commentator in the Republic the timid prey of ambulance chasers...

...DCKETTES to the most unmanageable follies, a datum that universities, corporations, and the government are beginning to discover...

...A United States District,Court judge had earlier dismissed this suit on the grounds that the columnists' remarks were opinion hence protected under the First Amendment...

...in boxing there is plenty of interest in the lightweights, in motor racing Formula II holds practically as much interest as Formula I for the true enthusiast...

...Then they go beyond equality by demanding that special programs be established to herd bewildered girls into activities that they would rather shun and for good reasons...

...It is a cruel charade...

...Contrary to Judge Robinson's vision of opinion, all opinion assumes some facts, at least in the mind of the opinion-holder...

...and to insist that the opinion-holder recite the other fellow's side of the story is to put a very heavy ball and chain on us all...

...As I see it the Marxist-Leninists are to be commended...

...Had I not heard the grumbling myself I would have been expecting solemn testimonials to East Germany's progressive ways, especially from the feminist orators...

...EDITORIALS THE SPOTSWOODIAN PRONUNCIAMENTO by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...

...The story was buried...

...Equality of opportunity is a fine and equitable democratic ideal...

...Rather, our folly has been to deny reality, to attribute every discrimination to bigotry, even those discriminations that are based on irrefutable differences...

...The feminist argument is characteristic self-delusion...

...It is argued by some that sports fans turn out in larger numbers to see men because men are faster, stronger, and possibly more ferocious...

...When the Hon...

...The East Germans have been intelligent and even humane: better it is to face up to these differences and to resort to modern endocrinology than to deny their existence and to call in the feds whenever some wretch follows intellect's imperative and draws sensible distinctions...

...The first argument is pish-posh...

...The judgment is, of course, preposterous...

...How much of his blah are we going to have to endure...

...In essence it is his judgment that commentary is not "privileged opinion" and therefore insulated from libel when it "appears without any recitation of the underlying facts" or when the recitation of those underlying facts is in some way unsatisfactory to some lawyer and his client or potential client...

...It is also customary for the newspaper to limit the space available for syndicated columnists to express their editorial opinions...

...Tip O'Neill says, as he did last month, that the Reagan Administration is "telling the middle class that it serves our nation's interest for us to take from the needy and give to the rich," is he really libeling the President until he gives Ron's side of the story...

...Most women are as unmoved by sports as by commercials for power tools, and that they are so agreeable about their husbands' autumnal fascination with the mayhem of the National Football League is but more evidence of their general tolerance and humanity...

...Money-making sports like men's basketball are being asked to subsidize still more financial losers...

...So much for Judge Robinson, but what are we to make of the colleagues' tight-lipped response...

...Were their husbands to develop the same avidity for, say, women's wrestling, I doubt they would remain so agreeable...

...A more far-sighted course to follow would be to promote the American Civil Liberties Union's position that all expressions about public issues be immune from libel laws...

...Passing laws to assure that the ideal becomes reality has not been our folly...

...Moreover, shooting up their female discoboli with male hormones to make them hairy and strong is eminently more intelligent than passing legislation that declares sameness between the sexes and threatens legal action against those who do not go along with the delusion...

...What the East Germans have achieved is precisely the goal of recent American public policy, is it not...

...All this can be seen in the quixotic struggle to eliminate sex discrimination in college athletic programs, where some discriminations are perfectly justifiable owing to the comparatively lower level of interest manifest by coeds and by sports fans in female sports...

...The primary focus of such articles is opinion and they are generally so understood...

...This has led to an incalculable growth in litigation and bitterness, to say nothing of the costs borne by American society...

...Yet as we have discovered in recent years preposterous judgment held by a tiny minority of enemies of freedom can become the law of the land if those enemies of freedom are properly positioned in the Republic, and a seat in the United States judiciary is about the best place from which to slam down tyranny on the lowly Yank...

...My view is that they are a timorous lot, unconcerned about the First Amendment until they themselves feel the heat...

...The judiciary's conceptions of free speech continue to fluctuate much as the moods of the late Mussolini continued to fluctuate to the very end...

...and it has led persons named in such articles might consider to be necessary...

...Keep the ambulance chasers out of the editorial pages-they are meek and dreary enough what with all their truckling to suffering homosexuals, Third World revolutionaries, and other frauds I dare not mention lest I rouse from slumber Judge Spotswood W. Robinson III...

...There are fundamental biological differences between the male and the female, and those differences naturally conduce toward differences in taste and behavior...

...Evans and Robert Novak, Chief Judge Spotswood W. Robinson III of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia made the most blatant assault against the First Amendment in recent memory...

...His associate, Senior Circuit Judge George E. MacKinnon, revealed the decision's folly in his concurring opinion when he wrote: "Newspaper readers are likely to assume that articles appearing on the op-ed page, especially nationally syndicated editorial comments . . . are intended to express specific opinions...

...Now Judge Robinson tells us that opinions that "suggest" facts can be considered libelous unless the writer scrupulously presents all opposing facts...

...Last month a Kansas City court decided that a TV journalist cannot be suppressed as she reads the news from behind an aging visage prettified according to her tastes rather than to those of her boss, and throughout the journalistic profession the colleagues were gleeful...

...Yet the feminists begin by demanding equality of expenditure whether or not there is equality of interest...

...If America is really serious about the feminist dogmas of sexual sameness, all roads lead to East Germany and to the quacks with the hypodermics, but leave me off in Paris...

...Who wants to sweat and to develop enormous trapezius muscles...

...A press mouthing homogenized opinions is fine with them so long as they can keep those opinions under the sway of sentimental liberalism...

...Frankly, I was flabbergasted...

...Why is there not as much interest in women's sports as in men's...

...By massaging Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 the feminists have made considerable headway in damaging well-established intercollegiate sports programs...

...Their traditional warnings about how the average Americano fears and hates the Bill of Rights went un-uttered...

...To this the feminists respond with their usual gallant sophistries and maudlin complaints about thousands of years of male chauvinism, which in this case even kept them out of the ancient Greek games...

...Under these circumstances, readers of the opinions of nationally syndicated columnists are less likely to be misled by the omission of some facts that EAST GERMAN JOCKETTES Last month the halls of public comment echoed with complaints that the East German woman athletes in the world track and field championships could hardly be distinguished from the men...

...This requires that their views be presented in very condensed form...

...Yet the colleagues entered scarcely a peep...

...This monstrosity would practically eliminate free expression...

...How much time or print is going to have to be accorded Tip to get his message across...

...Judge Robinson's formula is thoroughly inimical to the free society and utterly insensitive to the practicalities of public discourse...