Suzyn Waldman, the female Eliot

October 11th, 2007 | Posted by PostmanE

There are two different tacts to take on Suzyn Waldman’s utterly disastrous on-air breakdown the other night. One can claim (as a friend told us Mike North, Chicago radio host, did) that this is a reason why women shouldn’t be broadcasters — they’re too emotionally volatile, too attached to the teams, etc. As if it needed to be enumerated, a reminder: this is an incredibly stupid, ignorant thing to say.

The other is the one I think is right: you can admit that Waldman’s tears were unprofessional without demonizing her for it. She’s a fan, you know? It’s funny and pitiable, but it’s not the end of broadcasting as we know it.

Anyway, in biting back, Waldman probably should have dropped the poetic line. There’s nothing like stupidity mixed with pretension:

“This one’s getting me angry, because I don’t play this card a lot, but this is as sexist as it gets,” the Yankees’ radio analyst said Wednesday. “What’s the big damn deal? That I cried for four seconds of a 10-minute postgame?

“The idea that I can’t choke up because a man I went through cancer with 11 years ago is going to lose his job and I was describing his coaches crying? It’s absolutely ludicrous.”

“I’m not Walter Cronkite,” she said. “Who are these arbiters of journalism who are .ripping me on the radio?”

“I almost understood the Clemens one, because I did get excited and it was during the game,” she said. “But who decided all this? The rules change all the time. It’s, ‘Oh, you’re a journalist.’ For Pete’s sake, I am not Walter Cronkite. I’m not talking about Iraq.

“I’m talking about a man who is so loved in this city and we all know what’s going to happen. I actually thought I was very poetic. I’m very surprised how it got out that smoothly.”

Waldman called the reaction “anti-female” and insisted she serves a valuable role.

“I take it seriously that I am a conduit between that locker room and fans,” she said. “Every person was so busy ripping me for crying, they didn’t hear what I was saying. … If I got choked up doing it, so what?”

I’m no poetry critic, but I can ensure that while Waldman’s gaffe was hilarious and pitiful and endearingly sad, it most certainly was not poetry.

This is poetry, Suzyn. Duh.