Women Make #1 on DC Sports Blog. Seriously.

Yes, it’s true. We made the #1 slot on the Top 10 WaPo Sports Stories (Washington Post).

You’ll notice, under this picture, Dan says,

“Last week’s most popular sports topic. Seriously.”

Yes, seriously, Dan. Thank you to everyone who supported the coverage of women’s Olympic gymnastics (including corporate sponsors).

The number 1 story is listed as:

“1. This ‘Inquiry’ Falls Flat, by Sally Jenkins. Olympics column, criticizing the IOC for its weak-kneed investigation into the possibility of underage Chinese gymnasts.”

Looks like there’s hope out there, after all. Maybe Dan Steinberg will someday start covering women’s sports regularly, too.

Let’s only hope that it can be about womens’ accomplishments, not WNBA fights or controversy over Olympians’ age.

Drug Marketing Meets Primetime TV

Online searches via Google for the drug amantadine spiked on early last week after the drug played a prominent role in the medical drama “House.”

In terms of digital health, as the Washington Post accurately points out, this is important for one key reason. Primetime TV is a powerful medium to send people to the Internet to look up drugs.

In the epidsode, House, the hero on the show, realized that a young woman named Amber had damaged kidneys and was taking amantadine for the flu. The drug built up to toxic levels.

The result of mentioning amantadine: the drug shot to the top of Google’s hot trends list last week, WSJ’s Buzzwatch reported.

So, there is a clear connection here. Primetime TV and pharmaceutical drugs.

According to Jacob Goldstein at the Washington Post, between January and September of last year, pharmaceutical products and logos were seen or mentioned 705 times on broadcast and cable television, up from 630 times during the same period in ‘06, Fortune reported last year.

Rachel at Our Bodies Our Blog also pointed out that last year, The Well-Timed Period noted posters for the NuvaRing on the set of Scrubs and wondered whether this was an example of “stealth pharma marketing.” It later became clear that this was exactly the case, with NuvaRing maker Organon Pharmaceuticals acknowledging placement deals with primetime programs including “Scrubs,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” and “King of Queens.”

But the FDA can’t ignore this forever. Researchers at UCLA recently called for the FDA to regulate this marketing scam.

The facts about drugs in scripts are poorly supervised and sometimes incorrectly portrayed (as are medical terms and emergency situations). But what we can see from last week’s report is that people are paying attention. And, they’re making the extra step of going onto their computers to find out more.

If the facts are incorrect, this can become a large-scale public health concern if the FDA does not jump in soon.

As far as marketing goes, the Pharma companies will probably see the TV-internet connection as a positive trend and attempt to buy their way into more Primetime TV shows.

FINALLY, A Woman Speaks Up. Who’s Listening?

This week is a pivotol one in the history of journalism (AND, sadly, in the history of feminism). I could not believe my eyes. In the past two weeks, there was not one, but TWO articles in the Washington Post about how sexist this Democratic Presidential nomination actually is.

In “Misogyny I Will Not Miss,” Cocco gives an excellent recap of what it’s been like for Hillary (and Hillary supporters) as we endure the oh-so-wonderful sense of humor of the media and American public. Here are some of my favorites:

I will not miss seeing advertisements for T-shirts that bear the slogan “Bros before Hos.” The shirts depict Barack Obama (the Bro) and Hillary Clinton (the Ho) and are widely sold on the Internet.

I will not miss walking past airport concessions selling the Hillary Nutcracker, a device in which a pantsuit-clad Clinton doll opens her legs to reveal stainless-steel thighs that, well, bust nuts. I won’t miss television and newspaper stories that make light of the novelty item.

But perhaps it is not wives who are so very problematic. Maybe it’s mothers. Because, after all, Clinton is more like “a scolding mother, talking down to a child” (Jack Cafferty on CNN).

I won’t miss reading another treatise by a man or woman, of the left or right, who says that sexism has had not even a teeny-weeny bit of influence on the course of the Democratic campaign. To hint that sexism might possibly have had a minimal role is to play that risible “gender card.”

You can read the article for yourself. Excellently written, adequately described and tragically true. If only there could be more. But then — there was another one. Today in the Washington Post -”The ‘Not Clinton’ Excuse.” Same author. (kudos!)

This article beautifully bashes those who fear another “Clinton dynasty,” and articulates the urgency for the public to see that THIS woman needs to be elected NOW (as opposed to other powerful female politician hopefuls who have entirely too many limitations to actually have a chance in this generation).

There are two key parts to this article which really hit home for me (and, in my opinion, are the key ingredients to a great piece): the introduction and the conclusion.

(The introduction:)

“A woman? Yes. But not THAT woman.

It is the platitude of the moment, an automatic rejoinder to any suggestion that Hillary Clinton has struggled so desperately — and so far unsuccessfully — to grasp the Democratic presidential nomination in some measure because she is female.”

(The conclusion:)

“Clinton cleared the hurdles often cited as holding American women back, yet she is unlikely to surmount the final barrier. So you have to wonder.

Is it something about Hillary, or something about us?”

I would like to thank the editors of the Washington Post Writers Group for allowing such content to be published. These days, you never know.

I would also like to thank YOU, Marie Cocco, for finally speaking up. Not just as a journalist of this country, but as a woman with a voice. My only fear is that it might be a little bit too late.