If you haven’t seen the comments posted on my two WDM freestyle blogs, you might want to check those out before reading on. I feel compelled to respond to the remarks left by several readers.
First of all, to Leueen, my sincere apologies if you took my line about old ladies personally. There WERE quite a number of people in the media tribune – and not all of them from the more senior demographic – whom in all my years of covering Olympics, WEG, World Cup, WDM Palm Beach etc. I had never seen. Several of them – yourself included – did not have any apparent purpose of the journalistic kind, betrayed by a lack of lap top, note book or pen. I’m not sure if you are up to speed with the current climate of news-related humor fostered by the likes of Stewart and Colbert (and please no one write any comments about me having no right to compare myself with those famous funny fake news men, because I’m not), but laughs are typically gained at someone’s expense, even sometimes at one’s own. And these days almost nothing in the media is sacred. Not even old ladies.
To Tom Reed: you seem to be offended by my mentioning of the word ‘gay’. This is the 21st century, man. Ask any gay man what his sexual orientation is and he will almost certainly tell you ‘gay’. It’s not a four letter word. If Edward and HP were straight men, I would very possibly have written ‘two straight men’.
To J. C.: I don’t know you, but your defense of Brian (which is vastly out of proportion with what I wrote) leads me to wonder why you feel so defensive (and by the way, I wasn’t the one who criticized his pronunciation on this blog, it was another commenter). It WAS silly of him to say ‘the main ring’ when it was the only ring. I wonder if perhaps the reason you feel so sensitive is because you have participated in the sport in the same role as Brian? By the way, the website you have posted on your FB and Twitter pages isn’t working.
To those who question my creds as a rider and journalist, I have only this to say: If you know nothing about my riding, journalistic or other professional background in the equestrian industry, you might want to hold off on the outrage until you’ve done a bit of the research you have accused me of not having done.
