First, the atmosphere and ambience of minor league baseball are what people love. The small parks, the good, cheap seats, and the wacky promotions all contribute to the ambience. You don't get that ambience on television. It's covered up with commercials and replaced with schmaltz. A two-second clip of a Mustard-Relish race on the way back from commercial doesn't cut it.

Second, your comparison to other "minor" sports like badminton and archery is a false comparison. My understanding (which may of course be incorrect) is that many of these programs are basically infomercials, subsidized by the sport's governing body--either directly or by requiring the league to pay to produce the broadcasts or take responsibility for selling (at a loss) some of the advertising. Minor league attendance is healthy, and baseball has no reason to try to cut a sweetheart deal with ESPN which would potentially dilute major league ratings. And without a sweetheart deal, ESPN can't make money on it.

Yes, it makes for a salacious headline, which is probably why the British tabloids are covering this "story," but I expect a somewhat higher standard of journalism from Salon.

The BNP is nothing more or less than the British Nazi Party -- and this is not exaggeration; the party's founder has said that "Mein Kampf is my bible," their current leader has dismissed the Holocaust as "propoganda," and one of their Parliamentary candidates was actually arrested on suspicion of trying to assassinate Tony Blair. As a result, they've never gotten as much as 1% of the vote in any national British election.

This context is an important part of the story, making it both less surprising (because, well, he's a nazi), and less worrying (because he's a fringe candidate for a fringe party). This context is completely missing from your post.

The story here is: "An avowed Nazi, leader of a political party that believes that Jews, non-whites, gays, and non-Christians are not human and have no rights, also believes that women are not human and have no rights. And, shockingly, other avowed Nazis don't condemn him very strongly! Is this really newsworthy? To me, the most surprising thing is that he was removed as a candidate.

I expect this kind of tabloid journalism from the Evening Standard, the British tabloid that broke the story. All they care about is a good headline that gets people to pick up the paper, and Eriksen's statements make for that. I expect better from Salon.

Of course this sort of thing affects the discourse...but only because publications like the Evening Standard (and, now, Salon) publish it. You can't say it's important to condemn it because it affects the national discourse, since it's the act of condemnation (with giant, eye-catching headlines, of course) that got it into the discourse in the first place.

If it's really important to repeat everything offensive that's said by any fringe group in the world, why don't we get daily updates sbout the leaders of the American Nazi Party, World Church of the Creator, the National Alliance, and the Aryan Nation? I can pretty much guarantee you that one of their leaders said something just as offensive recently.

And, of course, if Broadsheet really does want to counter this element of the national discourse, she should have made it perfectly clear who the BNP are, what they stand for, and how marginal they are. Making these seem like mainstream pronouncements when they're not is doing the BNP's PR for them; the better story would be "these are views that are held only by crazy extremists who also want to make England an all-white nation by law." Then maybe people wouldn't be in such a hurry to say "hey, maybe they have a point" in their replies.

Just to clear up a few points from Amazonian's letter, since he touched on one of my pet peeves as an American soccer fan:

1. The word "soccer" is not an American invention. It's an English word, derived from English schoolboy slang for the sport's full name, "Association football." English children created "Soccer" and "Rugger" to distinguish between the two forms of football played at the time, Association and Rugby.

2. Yes, the sport is called football in many countries. But it doesn't have any more of a claim to that name than any other form of football, including American ("gridiron") football, Australian rules football, Canadian football, Gaelic football, or Rugby league or union football, all of which are derived from the same original game--in which, by the way, it was perfectly legal to use your hands.

3. As a result, in each country, only the most popular variant can be called simply "football." This means it's not just an American thing; in fact, England may be the only English-speaking country in the world where "football" means "soccer." To English-speakers in Australia, Canada, and South Africa, the sport is called "soccer."

4. Finally, the term "football" has nothing to do with the fact that the ball is kicked rather than thrown; in fact, as I've said already, it was legal to use your hands in most older forms of football, and still is in most versions. For many years, even in association football, it was still legal to catch or knock down the ball with your hands as long as you didn't throw it or run with it. "Football" originally referred to the fact that the game was played on foot rather than on horseback.

If you're going to criticize American soccer fans, please find a better reason. You might as well get huffy about the fact that we call lifts "elevators" and lorries "trucks."