Renek Gaszewski [Blog]

Take a look at this report on the Maria Sharapova-Gisela Dulko match at Wimbledon Wednesday:
“As Sharapova and Dulko ran and stretched and lunged, most of the male spectators could not have cared less about their topspin forehands and would no more have recognised a western grip from a western movie — this match was about hormones, pure and simple.”
So there it is again. Is that what women’s tennis is for, so men can leer at the players’ bodies as they run and stretch and lunge on the court? Is women’s tennis just soft porn?
Women’s tennis is fighting a battle for credibility, and in some ways, it’s the same battle women’s sports have fought for years. But it has emerged again now at Wimbledon with the remarks of a former champion. And then this.
Darn media. You never know who writes this stuff anymore, right? Well, no.
This was the account on Wimbledon.org shortly after the match. The tournament’s official Web site. The game story.
It starts by pointing out that Sharapova said she wasn’t ready to win Wimbledon, and that she was right. She lost. And it said that we would have to look elsewhere for a champ. But…
Trying to persuade any gentlemen of a red-blooded persuasion to look anywhere other than in Queen Shazza’s direction is no easy task. Then again, if any woman has a chance of distracting the chaps for a moment, it is Miss Dulko.
“The 24-year-old from Buenos Aires has, in the past, been voted one of the sexiest players on the planet. And judging by the response in the press room, she is very likely to win any such contests in the future, too. According to the boys in the press room, Miss Dulko is really rather splendid.
I know there are plenty of guys out there watching women’s tennis for all the beautiful women in short dresses. Of course. Plenty are watching for the tennis and noticing the women, too.
Reality is reality. And everyone knows that it is helping to sell women’s tennis. But no way should the tournament’s own site be promoting this image of women’s sport, especially in its coverage of a match. Former men’s champ Michael Stich said the other day, basically, that women’s tennis needs to cut back on all the grunting, as it’s not sexy, and women’s tennis is just selling sex, anyway. And when someone asked Serena Williams about it, she said “Sex sells.”
So women have to fight the same tired battle again for credibility. And then Wimbledon comes out with this on its site:
“For all that the ladies of the WTA Tour wish to be taken seriously as athletes, there are times when they are fighting a losing battle.”
Well honestly, there is truth in that one. And in fairness, I found that story on the site mid-Wednesday afternoon. By Wednesday night, it was gone, replaced with an actual account of the match by the same female writer.
Yes, female writer. That just makes this all the more surprising. But still, it is blatantly sexist, and it flies right in the face of the women’s game and its ability to be taken seriously. And it’s particularly bad considering this sport’s history, this club’s stiff reputation.
I mean, is that what Wimbledon thinks is happening here? Women bending and lunging in short skirts? How about tennis? I know, I know. Some of these players aren’t wearing much, and do spend a lot of time worrying about their appearances. They have their own conflicts, trying to find a balance of appearance and athleticism.
Sharapova is on the cover of the current ESPN the Magazine, partly because of her sex appeal, partly for her tennis. In the magazine, she says she watched the game while she was out with a shoulder injury and thought, “Why do these girls wear so much makeup? I can’t even figure out how they keep their eyeliner from running.”
There is nothing wrong with trying to look good in public. But that match was not for hormones only. And at the very least, if that’s all people are watching tennis for, then they shouldn’t find it on the official Web site. Let them go somewhere else.

The phone call to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was unusual. The caller, who refused to identify himself, asked Putin to crack down on pedophiles and then quickly hung up.
Putin, who took the call during a televised call-in show in December, promised to toughen penalties for people who sexually abuse children and pointed to State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov, who happened to be in the studio at the moment, as the man who would spearhead the legislative effort.
The spontaneity of the call is disputable. Putin’s staff preselects all calls to his call-in shows, and media reports have suggested that the staff orchestrated some of the calls on that December day.
But one thing is for sure. Since the call, the government has adopted a harder line on child abuse — at least in words.
On Monday, International Child Protection Day, Kremlin supporters campaigned heavily against child abuse. Senior officials with United Russia, the pro-Kremlin party that Putin and Gryzlov co-head, held a Moscow round-table on measures to prevent child abuse. Young Guard, the party’s youth branch, held street rallies in 45 cities, including Moscow and St. Petersburg, to educate children about ways to protect themselves from abuse, the group said on its web site. Another pro-Kremlin youth group, Nashi, held a rally against pedophiles in Moscow.
Statistics on sex crimes against children are scarce. The number of children who were nonviolently sexually abused by adults increased sevenfold from 2003 to 2007 to 5,405, according to legislation under consideration in the Duma that would make good on Putin’s promise for tougher penalties on child abusers.
In 2007, the most recent year that statistics are available for, 8,805 children were victims of violent sexual abuse, the legislation says.
Meanwhile, the number of criminal cases involving suspected pedophiles that were sent to court grew from 35 in 2003 to 351 in 2006, it said. The figures do not indicate, however, how many suspects were involved and how many were convicted.
But even a conviction does not necessarily mean that a child abuser will serve much time in prison. In March, a former United Russia lawmaker with the Perm regional legislature, Igor Pastukhov, won early release after being convicted of raping a boy. Pastukhov had spent three years in prison after being sentenced to six, and his release on parole stirred up anger in Perm. Regional prosecutors said his release was legal.
Curiously, the former lawmaker was freed just days after President Dmitry Medvedev ordered law enforcement agencies to step up their efforts to prevent child abuse. “Proper work to prevent the most terrible and cynical crimes in this area can only be done through the combined efforts of all of society,” Medvedev said at the meeting at his Gorki residence outside Moscow.
Medvedev said Russia needed “a system of childhood protection” that included new legislation, measures to prevent child abuse and social services to care for abused children.
Russia’s current system of fighting child sex crimes is ineffective, especially when compared to that of the United States, Russian and U.S. experts concurred at a recent conference on fighting child sexual abuse.
“It is typical for a pedophile to get three or four years or a suspended sentence, and when they get out, they are not controlled in any way,” Vladimir Ovchinsky, adviser to the chief judge of the Constitutional Court, told the April 20 conference, which was organized by the Public Chamber.
In the United States, in contrast, an Atlanta doctor arrested in 2004 on suspicion of traveling to Russia to have sex with boys and later convicted on separate child sex charges received 35 years in prison, said Alexandra Gelber, a lawyer with the U.S. Justice Department’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section.
Gelber also told the conference that convicted U.S. offenders usually are monitored by authorities for the rest of their lives and restricted in their contact with children.
“If a criminal violates any of these rules, they will go back to jail,” she said.
Duma deputies are considering legislation that would extend the maximum prison sentence for people convicted of nonviolent sexual abuse of children from the current four years to 10. The bill would bar a convicted offender from working with children for 20 years instead of the current five.
A separate bill would extend the maximum prison terms for producers, dealers and buyers of child pornography from eight to 15 years. The bill also introduces a legal definition of child pornography.
A third bill would bar such convicts from applying for early release, a right which many prisoners have after serving half of their terms.
The Duma is scheduled to consider the bill on early release in a first reading this month. The other bills have not been placed on the agenda yet.

The office art adorning the walls of the Oregon Department of Corrections in Salem is varied in style and content. Look closely, and you’ll see unusual artist details.
One piece, featuring trucks, is called “Foot Puller.” The artist’s name is Nathan Harris, inmate number 11020095. It’s selling for $75. Another piece, titled “The Sentry,” was created Jack Crescenzi, inmate number 11020095. Sale price: $45.
A check of public records by KATU News reveals inmate Nathan Harris is in prison for sodomy and sex abuse. Jack Crescenzi was convicted on the first-degree murder of his wife, Bobbi Crescenzi.
The art was created by inmates housed at Oregon correctional facilities. The Oregon Department of Corrections says it displays the art, making the paintings and drawings available for sale to the public.
Mike Gower, Assistant Director of Operations, says the prisoners get the money, and it “goes into inmate trust accounts.” Trust accounts can be used by inmates to buy snacks and other personal items at their prisoner commissary.
This is the third year in a row prison officials have helped inmates sell their art for personal profits. Officials say the prisoners price the art themselves. One inmate priced his piece at $3,500.
Former Deschutes County Deputy District Attorney Patrick Flaherty, who prosecuted Jack Crescenzi, tells KATU News, “The main problem I have with that is that the money is not going to the victims of this crime. I think it’s perfectly okay for the corrections department to display the art and sell the art, but I think the proceeds should go to the crime victims, not to the inmate.”
KATU News has also learned there is no system in place in Oregon that automatically garnishes inmate earnings to pay their victims court-ordered restitution, unless the inmates are working minimum-wage jobs within the prison. The Oregon Department of Justice does go after individual inmates for money owed to the state, but only on a case-by-case basis. And crime victims often have to file civil lawsuits against offenders to claim money due to them.
Meg Garvin, Executive Director of the Lewis and Clark College’s National Crime Victim Law Institute, says, “If the system is set and money is being made by offenders and it’s not going to restitution, there’s a flaw in the system because victims should have the priority there. We should be making sure any money made should be going to restitution for the victims.”
Garvin says the restitution system nationwide is flawed, and victims often get restitution ordered but collecting it is a challenge any victim of crime faces, including crime victims in Oregon.

The wanton slaughter of mothers and the consequent struggles of grieving single dads has been an epidemic in Hollywood for a long time, and not only in movies starring John Cusack. “Quiet Chaos,” a new film from the Italian director Antonello Grimaldi, demonstrates that the sad-dad melodrama is a global (or at least a midlevel European art film) phenomenon. If the film is less maudlin and more psychologically astringent than most American specimens, this is partly a matter of Mr. Grimaldi’s restraint and partly thanks to Nanni Moretti’s sharp and unpredictable turn as the dad in question.
Mr. Moretti, who wrote the screenplay for “Quiet Chaos” with Laura Paolucci and Francesco Piccolo, is essentially a comic actor, but he is no stranger to bereavement as a subject. In “The Son’s Room,” which he directed (and which won the top prize in Cannes in 2001), he played a father sent reeling by the sudden death of a child. Here, as Pietro, a top executive in a multinational media company, he does not so much reel as blink, stumble and brood. He also has lunch and, since this is a midlevel European art film, some rough sex with a beautiful woman (Isabella Ferrari).
The film begins with a brutal, jolting coincidence. At the beach near their summer villa Pietro and his brother, Carlo (Alessandro Gassman) rescue two women from drowning, an event that is nearly simultaneous with an unspecified accident (it seems to involve cantaloupe) that kills Pietro’s wife, Lara. He is left with their 10-year-old daughter, Claudia (Blu Yoshimi), and a welter of confused emotions and reactions.
At the office things are heating up as Pietro and his colleagues (including the wonderful French actors Charles Berling and Hippolyte Girardot) debate a possible merger with another company, but Pietro abandons work, spending his days loafing in a small park near Claudia’s school. As the days stretch into weeks, he becomes something of a neighborhood character, a benign, eccentric presence whose watchful, diffident manner arouses sympathy and mild curiosity from other habitués of the area.
At its best “Quiet Chaos” lives up to its name, enmeshing its protagonist in a complicated, lived-in reality that obstructs his attempts to clear his head and organize his feelings. He passes the time by making mental lists — airlines he’s flown, houses he’s lived in — but other people keep interrupting him.
His wife’s sister, Marta (Valeria Golino), shows up with her own minor melodramas and with some interesting background about Pietro’s marriage. Guys from work seek him out with business updates, and he handles everything with a distracted air that hovers between worry and amusement.
Thankfully, Mr. Grimaldi and the screenwriters have no great lessons to impart or messages to deliver, and the film, while uneven — sometimes too on the nose, sometimes anecdotal and diffuse — is generally absorbing, thanks mostly to the quality of the acting. There is one climactic moment that is both jarring and wonderful in ways that have nothing to do with the story; it’s a surprise twist of casting, not of plot. I don’t want to spoil anything, but let’s just say that “Quiet Chaos,” in addition to its other, rather modest virtues, earns a special place in the movie-trivia pantheon, midlevel European art-film division, since it is perhaps the only film in which two consecutive winners of the Palme d’Or appear on screen together.

Angel of the North sculptor Antony Gormley has been wrapping 240 nude models in cling film, before making plastercasts of their bodies for his next exhibition.
The volunteers - aged from five to 95 and of all shapes and sizes - gathered at the Baltic Arts Centre in Gateshead as the project began.
The casts will be turned into moulds by the artist’s specially-trained staff and used to make dozens of carefully sculpted figures from stainless steel rods.
They will form a new exhibition, Domain Field, which opens at the Baltic in May.
More than one thousand people from Gateshead and Newcastle volunteered to take part in the project.
“I’m humbled by it”, Gormley told the BBC’s One O’Clock News.
“I think it is extraordinary that so many people are prepared to put up with this level of pain and discomfort just for the hell of it,” he added.
The castings are being carried out under the public’s gaze - although cubicles have been installed for the more private moments of the process.
It is time-consuming work, with only six to eight castings a day set to be completed.
Each sculpture will represent a living inhabitant of the North East.
‘Immortalised’
Volunteer Joanne Harri said she thought it would be really “exciting” to be part of the production process of an art project.
Describing the experience as she was being wrapped in plaster, she said: “It’s very strange, cold and wet. I’m sure there are more pleasurable ways to be immortalised.”
A spokeswoman said the sculptures were being made on site as the Baltic regarded itself as an “art factory“.
Trial castings took place before Christmas, and included some of the staff of the centre, which is a converted grain warehouse which opened last year.
Gormley is best-known for the 65 foot-high Angel of the North sculpture, which overlooks the A1 trunk road near Gateshead.
His terracotta installation Field For The British Isles was recently shown at the British Museum in London.