Remember 1997? Bill Clinton had just begun his second term in office, Titanic was a hit at the box office, and the nation's five most famous shortstops got together to lay around and pose topless—save for five matching gold chains—for a photo spread in Sports Illustrated. The image appears in a Sports Illustrated photo retrospective called "Derek Jeter: Off the Field." The set is accompanied by a collection of "tips from SI photographers on how to shoot sports."

But the tips left me searching for answers on how an aspiring sports photographer might recreate this magnificent tableau: Like, when you're shooting five baseball players at a time, is one of them necessarily going to end up looking a little creepy—in this case, Rey Ordonez? Do you have to provide the chains, or do they just show up wearing them? What is the correct lens to shoot a shortstop beefcake photo? (A friend is betting on a slight fishbowl). How do you convince these guys that this is a good idea? Finally, how can we bring 1997 back?

At first, the Huffington Post was content to objectify women whose décolletage, nipples, and other breast parts are a main fixture of their work—actresses, models, and reality television stars. Then, it moved on to objectifying female news anchors. With its cache of famous people with boobs running low, the Huffington Post has recently expanded the category of women it's willing to exploit. This time, it's chosen women married to baseball players. Or as I like to call them, "normal people whose bodies are none of your business!"

In order to stir up the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry, the Huffington Post has assembled a photo gallery of each team's "wives and girlfriends" and instructed its readers to "PICK YOUR FAVORITE YANKEES AND RED SOX HOTTIES AND VOTE ON WHICH TEAM'S GOT THE GOODS, AND WHICH TEAM IS STRIKING OUT." The women are then ranked on a scale of zero ("Stee-rike!") to ten ("Grand slam!").

On the surface, ranking the significant others of baseball players isn't much of a stretch from rating Hollywood breasts from "gross" to "gorgeous" (ugh). I can understand the widespread appeal of checking out Salma Hayek's boobs:

But I can't understand why readers would take the time to click through a slideshow of normal women who are pretty much just sitting around. There's no overflowing cleavage or nipple slips to be seen here, just some skirt suits, baseball caps, and a few dresses. These women, who happen to be in relationships with athletes, are only one celebrity step above street ogling, and yet they're deemed deserving of the sexual scrutiny of thousands of pathetic desk jockeys. In this case, the couple of famous faces—like major-league girlfriends Kate Hudson and Minka Kellie—only serve to provide unfair comparison to the collection of regular women, like Kellie Pedroia, Tiffany Ortiz, and Kristen Bay, who are all pretty attractive and are all rated around the "Meh" mark.

But the readers aren't actually rating the women. In this contest, the men compete to have the hottest wife. That's the most offensive aspect of this little slide-show—to the Huffington Post, these women aren't even worth enough to be ranked based on their looks (a dubious honor, I'll admit). Instead, the women function solely as a mechanism for assigning value to a baseball player.

When a reader marks a woman as a "stee-rike," he's not just saying he thinks she's ugly—he's saying she's not worthy to be married to a guy who plays baseball. And when he grants her a "grand slam," he graciously deems her worthy of dating the guy. Nobody gets a grand slam, by the way—in this game, even the famous, talented and beautiful Kate Hudson is only a 6.5. That means she's just barely worthy of dating Alex Rodriguez. In what sort of fucked-up ranking system is that phrase even possible?

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I don't think much of Sarah Palin as a feminist, but the Alaska Governor has emerged as an interesting figure in the movement for one reason: she has encouraged conservatives to unwittingly defend women's rights, and liberals to deny them. This MSNBC clip, featuring the Huffington Post's Katharine Zaleski and the Washington Times' Amanda Carpenter, is a perfect example.

Let's find out how easily women's issues fall to the side in the interest of ideological posturing. The stage is set: you've got your liberal pundit, courtesy of HuffPo; your conservative pundit, courtesy of WaTi; and your encouragement for the two to disagree on everything no matter what, courtesy of MSNBC. Let's throw a feminist issue in there—making light of rape—and see what happens.

Here, Zaleski and Carpenter are asked to face off on David Letterman's recent Late Show joke. Letterman said this about Palin and her 14-year-old daughter Willow's recent Yankees game outing: "During the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez." Letterman later took the statement back in a joke-filled apology claiming that he had meant to make the comment about 18-year-old Bristol Palin, not Willow.

Here's what Palin had to say about it: "I found out later the comment that was made about the statutory rape of my 14-year-old daughter Willow ... that crossed the line. Then others, chiming in on other comments Letterman has made. It's quite a sad commentary on where we are as a culture and a society ... He doesn't have to apologize to me. I would like to see him apologize to young women across the country for contributing to that thread that is throughout our culture that makes it sound like it's okay to talk about young girls in that way."

Carpenter, of course, took Palin's side, arguing that the comment was unacceptable, and further, that Sarah Palin had bolstered her women's issues cred by taking a stand over the comments. "It's hard for women in general when accusations like this are made, dirty jokes and things. There's always a conflict of—do you turn your head, or do you make a statement about it and push back? And even when you make a statement, you're accused of manufacturing outrage," Carpenter said. "She took that risk. She said, this isn't acceptable. And I think women are happy to hear that message. I'm certainly one of them."

Zaleski, of course, took the anti-Palin side. Let's check out her argument here:

"Sarah Palin basically ran the hate-speak express during the campaign. She stood there and watched people as they screamed 'kill him' at Obama and 'terrorist.' If she really wants to rise above this, she'll talk about irresponsible speech in general, irresponsible speech that many of her cohorts on national networks are using, irresponsible speech that's leading to things like what happened on Wednesday at the Holocaust Museum. If she really wants to make this an issue, she won't make this about herself and her family all the time, her family who she persistently trots out there, and her daughter who she made a statement about on Thursday. . . . I challenge people like Sarah Palin, like people you talk to on Fox News, to really condemn the language that's greater, this really reprehensible language, that's not just about Bristol Palin but that's about hate speech that's basically leading to actions which happened on Wednesday. That's what's disgusting.

Again, I don't buy Palin as a feminist figure. I, too, think she too often uses her personal life—growing up fishing and hunting with the boys, and then finding great personal success in the Republican Party—as a stand-in for female empowerment, while simultaneously ignoring women's issues as candidate and Governor.

Still, there's something about Zaleski's arguments here that I find particularly anti-feminist. Let's break them down:

1. Obama's girls are off-limits, but Palin's are fair game: "If she really wants to make this an issue, she won't make this about herself and her family all the time, her family who she persistently trots out there, and her daughter who she made a statement about on Thursday."

Read: "Some girls deserve it."

2. Palin started it by making comments about Barack Obama (who is also off-limits), which is why her daughter especially deserves it. "She stood there and watched people as they screamed 'kill him' at Obama and 'terrorist.'"

Read: "She was asking for it."

3. "I challenge people like Sarah Palin, like people you talk to on Fox News, to really condemn the language that's greater, this really reprehensible language, that's not just about Bristol Palin but that's about hate speech that's basically leading to actions which happened on Wednesday. That's what's disgusting."

Read: "Rape is not a real problem. You're exaggerating."

4. Letterman claims he had intended to make the joke about Bristol Palin, and we take Letterman at his word.

Read: "Officer, I didn't know she was under 18."