Open to criticism (and praise)

IN THE broadest and best sense, FOX’s U.S. Open coverage was good in that it was primarily devoted to showing live golf, which doesn’t sound like a remarkable achievement unless we consider how coverage of golf — including majors — seems eager to show everything except live golf.

As for FOX’s voices, analyst Paul Azinger was the medalist. He kept it crisp and mostly candid, while his air traffic controller Joe Buck, departing from his NFL and MLB demeanor, scored by making his information concise, his presence modest.

The flipside: Those cuts to on-site studio host Holly Sonders made her seem as if she’d been sent by Victoria’s Open Secret. Dressed in tight-fitting, skimpy outfits and provided full-figure camera shots to maximize the transparent sell, her golf knowledge was irrelevant; that’s neither why nor how she appeared.

And once again, a network’s high-minded inclusion of women within sports telecasts didn’t pass the legitimacy test. One could not escape the conspicuous: She was there to evoke “Va-va-va-vooms!”

To that same end, FOX’s Erin Andrews continues to demand it both ways. First at ESPN and now FOX she has demanded to be seen and heard as a legitimate broadcast journalist, not a target of sexual objectification — despite so often selling herself as the latter.

This month she appears on the front of a magazine wearing a come-hither itsy-bitsy red bikini and a broad smile, perhaps in self-satisfaction of her invulnerability to suffering any consequences of her and her networks’ rank hypocrisy.