(Photo by Jonathan Newton, The Washington Post)Election season is over, and the holidays are just around the corner. Nancy Pelosi is publicly embroiling herself in a battle over who will be the new House majority leader, while Moose and Goose agonize over what vegetable side dishes to serve with Thanksgiving dinner. Are they daring enough to serve brussels sprouts to a houseful of Moose's midwestern relatives, or will they settle for some mildly updated version of green beans? Now that the legislative branch of government is safely in the hands of Democrats, you'd think the fate of the republic hangs on the answer to this single question.
To which your favorite dog blogger replies: Who cares? It's college basketball season again! Oh, joy! Oh, rapture! Oh, mighty women of the University of Maryland who snatched the national championship last year when they were barely out of diapers. We are on pins and needles in our house waiting to see what they'll do now that their secret is out and everybody in the country will be gunning for them.
Those of you who are new to Roxie's World might want to look back in the archives for our paeans to the Lady Terps and their fabulous coach, Brenda Frese, as they pounded their way through last year's NCAA Tournament. Click here, and see the posts for April 3, 5, and 6. You'll notice in the post for April 6 that I mention a sign my moms made and took to home games last year that said, "Fear the Brenda." The highlight of every game for them was the moment when their sign was flashed up on the jumbo-tron in the Comcast Center for all the world to see. Thus, you can imagine Moose's delight this morning when she caught a reference to the sign in a column by Washington Post sports writer Mike Wise. To see the column, which is a nice tribute to the faith Maryland athletic director Debbie Yow had in her young coach despite the skepticism of the "women's basketball fraternity" (is that more or less sexist than "sorority" would have been in this context, Mike?), click here. Wise refers to my moms' sign to make a point about how tightly wound Coach Frese supposedly is and to introduce never proven allegations about possible recruiting violations by Frese.
For the record, Frese's program is not under investigation for any recruiting violation (as Wise notes), and Moose is a little ticked that her admiring tribute to Frese's powers of intimidation is invoked in the context of some baseless "controversy" no doubt generated by members of the "fraternity" whose teams had been walloped by Frese's scrappy grrls. I had to sit Moose down and explain that miscontextualization happens when you put your words out there for all the world to see. Being an academic, Moose isn't used to people actually reading what she writes. She's got a lot to learn about this business of the public sphere. Fortunately, she's got a good teacher--ME!
Get on the bandwagon, kids. Click here to get tickets for Maryland Women's Basketball: The Sequel!
I love that you conclude with the "being an academic line," sweet Roxie. And, having giggled myself a good one now that the Digital Humanities proposal is turned in, I'm turning in to bed myself and am going to coax you upstairs, you wonderful dog blogger to the stars. Hey, we need to get Moose to write the Washington Post. They'll publish her letter -- or at least they should, since it points out a FACTUAL error in their paper, after all.
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