No objections. Very good fun. GK needed for all xwords.

Thanks to Gordius and Andrew.

My earliest recollection of the media is when a local paper asked a friend how she felt about winning a prize. Her two word answer was misquoted with two other words!

Then there were the Mods and Rockers. They were paid by the press to fight and generally run up and down shouting and waving their arms about. This was duly reported as RIOTS!!!!

So by the time Ms Hite was in the media, I’m afraid I was no longer observing the media as it was clearly no more than a vehicle for pathological liars preaching to the willingly gullible. I was more likely to be found reading the so called Underground Press and avoiding TV news completely. Not, you understand, that I trusted them any more than the mainstream media. I just figured that if I was going to be lied to, it might as well be in an entertaining fashion involving viewpoints I could sympathise with.

The nearest I ever got to regular newspapers was The Sporting Life.

And what has changed in the media over the decades? Oh yeah, phone hacking. Don’t ya just love such fine upstanding members of society? Really makes you want to pay attention, not.

So there ya have it, never heard of the woman.

When Shere Hite was in the news (mumble) years ago one thing stuck in my memory.
Somebody on the radio said the first name should rhyme with Sherry. I am convinced my memory is correct. I make no such claim for the person on the radio as I cannot remember who that was.

I take the points made in criticism, but not as seriously as some seem to do.

I think the main problem with these clues is that they rely on information that some solvers do not have, so there is a ‘general knowledge’ element to them. But the answers are quite clear if one can recall the references with the help of the wordplay and crossing letters, and they are both quite amusing.

Drury University informs us that it is “Share Hite” at http://www.drury.edu/multinl/story.cfm?nlid=246&id=24518. That certainly corresponds to the pronunciation I have heard on US TV, thought it’s been a while since I’ve heard her name mentioned.

But pedantry aside, I do agree that Superiority in Stature = Sheer Height is a stretch, and while the translation from Latin to English in 17a hardly flickered the needle on my pecadillo meter (but then I did do Latin at school), the requirement to substitute a French word for an English one must be a violation of a section in a paragraph in a rule somewhere.