The loutish U.S. hockey men deserve anything but applause. But please spare me the lofty words about how female athletes are so totally pure and noble and grateful just to be there. It might have been true once. It isn't true anymore. And it is becoming less true by the hour.
Athletes are athletes.
For 20 years, I have visited locker rooms. Every one of them has good folk and jerks. And as I have sadly discovered, this is not gender-specific. I am thinking here of professional tennis player Irina Spirlea, who last autumn at the U.S. Open used one of the world's foulest obscenities to insult her opponent, Venus Williams. I also am thinking of the 1996 U.S. women's Olympic gymnastics team.