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Caitlin Clark: Open Season on the Golden Goose

Caitlin Clark gave the WNBA the audience it spent thirty years failing to find. On the night of June 24 it gave her a fist to the throat and a step over her body, and the officials paid to watch the floor saw nothing. Here is the case for her leaving. Begin with the tape, because the tape is where excuses go to die. Phoenix led Indiana late in the first half at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, a building that exists in its current sold-out form for one reason, and that reason was lying on the hardwood. Caitlin Clark had driven the lane, absorbed contact from Lexi Held, and gone down onto her side. The ball came loose. Held, DeWanna Bonner, and Alyssa Thomas dove after it and landed in a pile on top of her. Then Thomas, with Clark pinned beneath her, drove a closed fist into Clark’s throat, pushed herself upright, and stepped over the body of the best thing to happen to women’s basketball in forty years. One account of the scramble puts Thomas’s knee into Clark’s groin on the way down. Three referees stood within a few yards of all of it and called nothing.

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The Ugliest Shoes in the World

We all know we cannot afford cheap shoes.  Yesterday, I could not resist the opportunity to buy some cheap shoes/slippers/slip-ons at Payless because they were so ugly, and ridiculous, and — unlike O.J., these ugly-ass shoes fit me like a glove — and, as an added bonus, the slippers match the rug!  Now when I walk across the living room, I’m invisible from the ankles down!

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Mike Rice is Head Bully of Rutgers Basketball

Mike Rice is the head coach — and Head Bully — of the Rutgers University basketball team.  By the time you read this, Rice may be long gone, but his bloody head will not be the only one rolling down College Avenue.  Athletic Director Tim Pernetti most certainly should lose his head as well — as should Pernetti’s school bosses, like the President Robert Barchi, who, it appears, refused, along with Pernetti, to fire Mike Rice in November 2012 even after watching video evidence of the coach physically and verbally abusing his undergraduate basketball team during practice.  The Rutgers Board of Trustees must act now and clean the Rutgers house and fire Mike Rice, Tim Pernetti and President Robert Barchi — because they were all in collusion to not protect the welfare of the student athletes entrusted to their care.

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The Memeing of Black Bitches

Do you agree with Isiah Thomas that Black Men can call Black Women “bitches” while White Men cannot?

If not, where — in the cultural meme that grew and molded Isiah Thomas — did he learn to believe that it was appropriate and expected to call Black Women “bitches?”

Are all Black Women “bitches” by default in Isiah’s mind — or does he use that derogatory term on only those women he believes are below him in status and competence?  Is his mother a bitch?  His wife?  His daughters?

The chilling lesson of Isiah Thomas’ Black Bitches is that he sets an example for bad behavior modeling in young people who look up to him to catch ideas and inspiration from a man — A Proud Black Man — many of us used to admire and emulate.

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Isiah Thomas and His Black Bitches

Isiah Thomas — former basketball great, Hall of Famer, and currently president of basketball operations and head coach for the New York Knickerbockers — recently said under oath in videotaped deposition for a sexual harassment suit against him and the Knicks that it is more offensive for a White man to call a Black woman a “Bitch” than if a Black man did the same.

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A Semiotic Imus Wiping

I thought we were finished wiping up after Don Imus this week, but the ongoing reverberations in the media and in our comments for all our coverage are still too strong to ignore — Don Imus and the Rutgers Nappy Headed Hos and Race and the American Humor Line and The Lesson of Don Imus: Red is Thicker than Green and Creating Consequential Context: A Semiotic Moral Correction for Don Imus — and while some of our regular commenters have fallen off into the darkness, their voices have been replaced with new commenters offering counter-advocacy and fascinating arguments.

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Creating Consequential Context: A Semiotic Moral Correction for Don Imus

As we wrap up our necessary Don Imus coverage this week — Don Imus and the Rutgers Nappy Headed Hos and Race and the American Humor Line and The Lesson of Don Imus: Red is Thicker than Green — we turn the page by taking a scholarly, semiotic, examination of The Imus Incident and its created Consequential Context expressed in national editorial cartoons.

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