Periodic diversity rant: Soccer winos

Let's talk about something other than polling for a bit. Let's talk about diversity. And let's start by suggesting that diversity isn't measured by how many seminars you force your staff to attend, or how many mug shots of women you run in your A section, or how many faux-etymological memos you send out about the meanings of "refugee" and "evacuee." Diversity is a function of what you talk about, whom you talk to about it, and what you say. And featurizing is often an unfortunately direct indication of those things:

Big chill tonight and Saturday
Season's coldest temperatures so far are looming
Be sure to pack the extra blankets and gloves if you're headed to a Friday night high school football game or Saturday morning youth soccer match.

It will be very chilly.

Possibly the coldest temperatures so far this season are looming overnight, as a cold high pressure system builds over the region.

Not much interest among the spires uptown in ... oh, people whose houses aren't very well insulated, one supposes. Or who can't turn the heat up because most of the check is already gone.

It will be very cold Saturday morning for parents and children involved in youth soccer leagues, and sunshine will only slowly warm temperatures during the day.

But nice and warm for winos! And people who go outside and work for a living on weekends! When you address your audience in the second person, you're telling me a lot about the sort of readers you want. Usually, you're telling me even more about the sort you don't.

(File "Big chill" with "It's official," while we're at it, and issue another reminder about the number of times you can say "very" in one weather short.)

Before we leave, enjoy this early breakaway candidate for Sentence of the Month (underlined below, as it needs a bit of a setup):

Could there be anything cooler than young people devoting their time to a righteous cause, or a fallen friend?

Yes.

Check out what Name Withheld helped pull off Saturday afternoon at the Parents Day football game at Presbyterian College in Clinton, S.C. ... Rather than protesting the war in Iraq or the cafeteria food on campus, several hundred fans left the stands and walked around the track to honor cancer survivors.

That's right, girls! Don't worry your pretty little heads about those pesky international relations! Dean Wormer will look into that as soon as the Omegas take care of the Deltas.

Pretty much anybody can liken a war to cafeteria food, after all. But to belittle a gesture of genuine decency in the process -- dude, that's writing!