"Hockey Moms 4 Palin"

Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska spoke at the convention in St. Paul on Wednesday. Photo by Todd Heisler/The New York Times.

I found it a bit comical to see people holding up signs during the National Republican Convention last night that said "Hockey Moms 4 Palin." Not completely sure why. I guess it may have something to do with the fact that non-hockey fans continue to attempt to discredit the sport at every turn, yet come to the battlefield with no more ammunition than television ratings in their pathetic arsenal. Yes, folks, let us turn to the benumbed masses, languishing in front of televisions across the country, to inform our opinions on what is best. I don't think so. The intricacies of hockey as a televised sport in this country are much more complex than simply saying people don't care about the sport because no one watched the one regular season game that happened to be broadcast on a random Sunday afternoon in November at 2 p.m. If hockey was marketed like NFL football--force-fed to us every day of the week in waves of promos and in full on Monday nights, Thursday nights, an occasional Friday, and all day every Sunday, only then will I talk hockey vs. football ratings with these idiots. Anyway, the sign holders last night, to me, offered some validation to the sport. After all, here is one of the country's grandest stages, and the producers of the "show" seemed more than willing to give the sport of hockey some free advertising. And, by the way, Governor Palin seemed to do quite well during her speech.

And I must mention that all of this "hockey momism" didn't escape David Letterman's writers. A joke from one of his recent monologues went something like this:

"So Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin claims she is a hockey mom. For those of you who don't know what hockey moms are - they're just like soccer moms ... but with less teeth."

UPDATE: Further reading can be found here.