What came around, went around.
Once again, media pandering has proven to have no upside.
Ilie Nastase was always a classless slug, “Nasty” being as much a description as a fun and easy nickname.
But in the “charisma” days of international tennis — when the boorish acts of Nastase, Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe were applauded by a media, especially TV, that still confuses incivility with populist appeal — Nastase was lovingly presented to the public as “good for the game” not in spite of acting like a creep but because of it.
So last week, when he made a childishly racist comment about the biracial baby Serena Williams and Alexis Ohanian are expecting, the world was supposed to be shocked.
Shocked by what? Nastase only was staying in character, a character we were supposed to have loved less for his ability and more for his flammability. He could transcend tennis to help make it must-see TV.
It was, after all, the next wave, including Pete Sampras and Ivan Lendl, who were to be appreciated for their games but condemned for their “lack of flair and charisma” — code for not acting like jerks.
All they provided was superb tennis, which was not good enough. Having so closely followed the “charisma” boys, they were considered bad for TV, thus bad for tennis.
Yeah, great tennis was no longer good enough; it’s boring. Where was Connors to mime masturbating on the handle of his racket? Where was McEnroe to throw a tantrum, berate the chair ump, weed-whack the potted flowers at courtside?
Naturally, Williams was stung and angered by Nastase’s moronic response to her pregnancy — “Let’s see what color [the baby] has, chocolate with milk?”
Yet, her indignation over Nastase’s speaks-for-itself stupidity seems selective, perhaps more self-serving than admirable.
In February, ESPN, which also suffers from selective indignation, fired commentator Doug Adler in the midst of the Australian Open for making what only a complete fool would regard as a racial slur.
Drawing on a new-age description to describe players who surprise opponents who suddenly abandon the baseline to stalk the net, he said, and with accuracy, that Venus Williams, Serena’s sister, was successfully using “the guerilla effect.”
In other words, Venus was ambushing her opponent with guerilla-war tactics.
Next, someone bitterly complained on what we now broadly call “social media.” Adler, it was disseminated, is clearly a racist, having called Venus Williams “a gorilla.”
Here’s hoping your boss and my boss would ignore such a claim, or politely respond that the viewer misinterpreted the comment, or tell the plaintiff to get lost and stay there.
Not ESPN. It forced Adler to apologize for an unfortunate use of the term, then fired him. It wasn’t political correctness gone too far, it was just plain nuts. The man was fired, his career and reputation ruined, for a racist crack he never spoke!
At that point, the Williams sisters might have tried to come to Adler’s rescue, spoken out as loudly and as clearly on his behalf as Serena recently did on her own behalf.
If anyone had the ability to save this man from such an injustice it was one or both of the Williams sisters, Venus the target of Adler’s imagined racism. Either, and perhaps both, could have publicly explained and declared his innocence.
But neither did a thing. They allowed an innocent man, falsely accused, to walk ESPN’s plank.
Singing that same old wrong
The one thing we can admire most about Mike Francesa is his indefatigable, self-delusional megalomania. He never tires of being authoritatively yet colossally wrong while pretending — as if we don’t know better — that he is always right.
Naturally, he knows more, from the inside to the out, about the NFL draft than any mere mortal.
This year he provided expert analysis on the red-flagged urine analysis of star Michigan defensive back Jabrill Peppers. Francesa, of course, had no idea what he was puffing about, again presenting bad guesswork as fact.
He also had Florida State’s Dalvin Cook as a first-five pick and the first running back selected. Later, he slightly backed off that tout when he “learned” Cook is considered a behavioral risk.
Of course, Francesa, Mr. Inside Expert, was the last to “learn” this. It is an old story. Cook became a risk when he was first arrested at age 14.
Cook, Thursday night, was not even chosen in the first round.
Still, Francesa pretends to know that you don’t know.
He reported that his sources told him Teddy Bridgewater was the “sleeper” quarterback of the 2013 draft — when Bridgewater, after his freshman year at Louisville, wasn’t even eligible for that draft.
But Francesa’s inside sources often seem fictional, fabricated — or lifted from newspapers and the Internet.
Following the 2010 arrest of Lawrence Taylor for soliciting sex with a 16-year-old in Ramapo, N.Y., Francesa, who thought Ramapo was in New Jersey, claimed to be in touch with the case’s New Jersey police investigators in the New Jersey police department. That’s right, he had non-existent inside sources. Again.
Before the 2015 draft, he said, with great authority, that he knows Titans’ coach Ken Whisenhunt so well that there is no way he will draft Oregon QB Marcus Mariota — Whisenhunt, said Francesa, won’t draft “a short” QB.
The Titans chose Mariota, who is 6-foot-4.
Goodell as honest as a politician
Do you find that Roger “PSLs Are Good Investments” Goodell is unable or disinclined to recognize, speak or act on plain truths?
Same here.
He reminds me of politicians who campaign on promises of providing “more transparency” rather than the truth.
Thursday from the NFL draft, Goodell told ESPN this about the replay rule: “It’s a system we’ve been essentially working on, with a few tweaks, for the last couple of years.”
Nonsense.
The NFL’s game-killing, foresight-forsaking replay rule was first used in 1986 and has undergone “tweaking” every year since.
Introduced to correct “egregiously incorrect calls,” it seldom is used for that purpose, instead providing second subjective opinions to adjudicate very close calls that were never previously at great issue.
In the interest of greater transparency, someone should tell Goodell that he is too transparent; we see right through him.
There are times when words are worth a thousand pictures.
For example, the shot-callers at FOX Sports must be good with Katie Nolan’s continuing tweets of vulgarities. Perhaps, however, FOX encourages her, as it considers classlessness among her strengths.
And are none of our colleges that come to the NFL draft embarrassed so many of their full scholarship student-athletes are unable to speak even marginally correct English? They’re college men, for crying out loud!