I remember, in the not so distant past, when the first woman sportswriter showed up on the scene.

My God, what a hoorah it caused. A woman walking into a locker room where men were walking around either naked or covered only by a small towel.

People wrote letters and columns about it. As I recall, I sat on a panel designed to come up with some rules to govern this strange situation.

The thing about it was that the only people who didn't seem all that upset over the concept were the women sportswriters and the athletes who were doing the naked walkaround.

It's funny how things have come at least half circle, with a big hoorah now over how women dress and act when they're in the locker room.

I'm talking about the affair of Erin Andrews, Stephanie Sutton, Jessie Garcia, Trenni Kusnierek, Lou Piniella, Alfonso Soriano, Drew Olson and Mike Nadel, a columnist for Gatehouse News Service.

This started when Nadel wrote a column calling out Andrews, a sideline reporter for ESPN, for her clothing and behavior during the recent Brewers-Cubs series at Miller Park.

Basically, what he said was that she was dressing and acting like a moderate slut in order to get interviews. He said she wore "a skimpy outfit designed to accentuate her, um, positives." He also said she seemed to flirt with athletes and even touched a couple of them during conversations. After his column hit, the lid was off this can of worms and everyone jumped into the fray.

Nobody with more thought, fairness and good judgment than Drew Olson, the senior editor of OnMilwaukee.com and one of the best and fairest sportswriters I've ever known. He wrote a column about what Nadel wrote and he got several women sports reporters in Milwaukee to chip in and write their observations about the whole thing.

This dust-up even hit the national press.

It's time for some perspective on this whole thing.

The first is that it on television, IT MATTERS HOW YOU LOOK! Trust me on this. I have sat with news directors and station managers in dark rooms watching audition tapes of people looking for work. The most common phrase you hear is "she looks good." Not many people ask about how many stories she's broken. But how she looks is very, very important.

Secondly, we should understand that the creation of "sideline reporters" is a fairly recent invention and one that has dubious value. Sideline reporters can range from Andrews to Tony Siragusa. What they say is rarely important, almost never news and most often is something we could easily live without.

Next, who cares what Andrews is wearing? It's not like she was walking around in lingerie or something. She had a dress with a V-neck and the hemline was above her knees. For a columnist, especially a male columnist, to write something about how she dressed is nuts. It's OK to notice it, but write about it? Never.

And the women sports reporters who think that Andrews and what she was wearing have set women reporters back need to get over it. They don't need to prove anything. The old boys' club doesn't really exist anymore. There aren't many athletes, with the possible exception of Joe Namath, who are surprised by women reporters or treat them differently than male reporters. Maybe jocks are a little nicer to women reporters, but that's a good thing.

If women reporters keep reacting like this every time some stupid guy says something about them, they will spend all their time reacting. Men are stupid about women. There is no disputing that, so ladies, get over it.

Look at the women who do sports in Milwaukee: Sutton, Garcia, Kusnierek and Jen Lada. It's television. Not a dog in the bunch. Some are sexy. Some are cute. Some are sparkly. But they all have proven that they belong in the crazy world of sports journalists. Stop whining when Andrews comes in turning heads. You ladies turn plenty of heads, too. It's just that no dumb man has written about it.