* Sarah Vowell’s op-ed column in Saturday’s New York Times questions why the Department of Homeland Security distributed $38.31 for each Wyoming resident but only $5.50 for each person living in New York.

Vowell, who’s filling in for Maureen Dowd while the Times columnist is on book leave, wrote earlier in the week about her desire to shake the hand of Pat Robertson — now that he’s encourging the use of condoms in Africa to help stop the spread of AIDS.

* There’s been some discussion of the sexual harassment suits filed against American Apparel founder Dov Charney in the comments of this post. Sunday’s Style section of The New York Times has a story about American Apparel’s sexist work environment (thanks, Bekke, for pointing to it before the paper arrived). Business Week has a more comprehensive story that really shows Charney’s lack of charm.

* It’s only a question of when, not if, Michele Wie will make the cut on the PGA tour, writes Times sports writer David Picker. I liked what Chicago Tribune sports columnist Mike Downey wrote about why Wie deserves to play with the men, but he ticked me off a bit further down in the column:

That said, I disagree strongly with the women who demand equal prize money at Wimbledon and other tennis tournaments.”

You want equality? Fine. Go play a five-set match. Annika Sorenstam doesn’t ask to play nine holes. Danica Patrick doesn’t ask to drive an Indy 250.

Point slightly taken (though it might also be worth noting that female tennis players have brought in more money and attention than the male players in recent years). But Downey shouldn’t talk about equality and women’s sports so flippantly. The purses on the LPGA tour (which Sorenstam has won plenty of), for example, are much smaller than PGA prize money. The marginal player is the person most affected, along with women who are trying to make a decision to fight to be on the tour or not. And that goes for the WNBA — where women play on the same-size court as men — and practically every sport where competition is segregated by gender.