USA Today Once Again Eats Pavement Over This Tweet About Caitlin Clark
This didn’t happen again, did it? It did. USA Today attempted to criticize Caitlin Clark twice and failed both times. First, this absurd op-ed by Nancy Armor, who honestly should be assigned a different beat because sports
and social issues aren’t her strong points. Sorry, the whole op-ed
sounded like it was written by someone who doesn’t watch sports, and the
comparisons were downright comical. She compared Clark fandom to white supremacy,
adding that the hostility directed at other players over this issue
with one of the WNBA’s star players is like Emmett Till or something.
Clark has been targeted aggressively, with officials missing numerous
calls on what are clearly hard fouls.
It seems there is a white nationalist element to Clark’s
fandom that is deeply, deeply problematic, made even more so because the
WNBA is made up predominantly of Black women, many of them queer. When
Clark claims fouls that don’t exist, when she goes on profanity-laced
tirades at referees, those racists see her as a white woman in need of
saving and take matters into their own hands.
Gray posted just one
of the messages she got following the Fever game, in which a man called
her a racial slur. After fans identified the man, he was fired by his
employer, Hilton Grand Vacations.
It shouldn’t need reminding this
country has an awful history of Black people being harmed, even killed,
in the name of “defending” white women. The WNBA's All-Star Game this
weekend is in Chicago, Emmett Till's hometown, and a local art gallery
is currently hosting an exhibit imagining his life if he hadn't been
lynched. While it’s incumbent on the WNBA to do more to protect its
players, there also should be an expectation on Clark to recognize the
wider consequences of her actions.
Armour issued a
media apology that was more of a non-apology, which protected her
account. Now, the same publication tried to criticize Clark for not
attending the WNBA All-Star Orange Carpet event, only to have to eat
crow because the Indiana Fever star wasn’t there—she was hosting a
charity dinner.
Clarification:
Caitlin Clark was attending an event for the Caitlin Clark Foundation,
which is why she missed the WNBA All-Star Weekend Orange Carpet.
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