First of all, what did Mr Luppi say that was "racist"? Ms Price offers no examples yet accuses him of doing so.

Secondly, at no time did Mr Luppi "basically acknowledged that Hai was being threatened because she's a woman -- and said that she deserves it," as Ms Price wrote. What Mr Luppi acknowledged was that Hai was being threatened because she was calling other gondoliers racists and sexists -- unjustly in Mr Luppi's view.

Now, Ms Hai may very well be a victim of sexism, but the evidence doesn't seem particularly compelling and certainly does not justify the hackish writing by Ms Price. Ms Hai admits that she failed 4 tests, but claims that three were rigged against her. [What about that un-rigged test failure?] I suspect that if a man had made such a claim he'd be dismissed as an embittered conspiracy theorist. Now, this is a female-oriented blog and a certain amount of sexism is inevitable, just as it is in a man-oriented blog, so I'm willing to overlook the gender bias here. Nevertheless, the facts of this case seem sufficiently muddled [or downright weak from Ms Hai's standpoint], that a more sober writer than Ms Price would have taken a different tone. Or just not brought the story up.

Ms Price also overlooks the most obvious and likely explanation: That some Venetian gondoliers are sexist, but Ms Hai's failures as a gondolier are her own fault.

when he was 15 or 16 years old and rave about how sexy he was? Yeah, I think they did. And I think it sold very well. And I think grown women loved it.

It's pretty gross, but it ain't new. 15-year-old girls should be hitting the books, not the runways.

Richard Dauphinee, the municipal warden, said he received only one complaint about the sex-segregated camp programs. Any public program that receives only one complaint is doing pretty well. Sex segregation of summer camps is very common, regardless of the age of the children. They are also very popular with kids and parents. There does not appear to be much of a controversy here.

According to Mr Dauphinee: "Each year we try and do something new and we survey the children and see what they would like," he said. "The girls wanted to make jewellery and have pedicures and manicures. That was their type of thing. The boys wanted to go fishing and play this par-three golf thing."

It seems the complaint here is that this public program was tailored to serve the largest possible percentage of the public. The girl is obviously disappointed and she has a right to be. But life is full of disappointments, particularly if you're out-voted.

I guess it comes down to this: Do you believe public programs should be tailored to serve the public or do you believe public programs should be tailored to mold the public in ways you find politically pleasing?

Your answer to that question will likely determine what you think of this story.

That's how it works.