Links - Serena Williams

It's shameful what US Open did to Naomi Osaka - "Naomi Osaka, 20 years old, just became the first player from Japan to win a Grand Slam. Yet rather than cheer Osaka, the crowd, the commentators and US Open officials all expressed shock and grief that Serena Williams lost. Osaka spent what should have been her victory lap in tears... It’s hard to recall a more unsportsmanlike event.. The crowd booed her. Katrina Adams, chairman and president of the USTA, opened the awards ceremony by denigrating the winner and lionizing Williams — whose ego, if anything, needs piercing. “Perhaps it’s not the finish we were looking for today,” Adams said, “but Serena, you are a champion of all champions.” Addressing the crowd, Adams added, “This mama is a role model and respected by all.” That’s not likely the case now, not after the world watched as Serena Williams had a series of epic meltdowns on the court... After her loss, Williams’s coach admitted to ESPN that he had, in fact, been coaching from the stands, a code violation. The warning was fair. Everything that followed is on Williams, who is no stranger to tantrums. Most famously, she was tossed from the US Open in 2009 after telling the line judge, “I swear to God I’ll take the f—king ball and shove it down your f—king throat.” John McEnroe was taken aback. Even Williams’s mother Oracene Price couldn’t defend her daughter’s outburst... she also could have tried to be gracious in defeat. No matter how her fans try to spin this, Williams was anything but. Upon accepting her finalist award, she gave parsimonious praise to her competitor while telling the crowd she felt their pain."

Serena Williams is fined $10,500 for US Open line judge tirade - "Afterwards, she was unrepentant: "An apology from me? How many people yell at linespeople? I see it happening all the time. I don't know how many times I have seen that happen. I am a professional. I'm not the beggar, like, 'Please, please, please, let me have another chance,' because it was the rules and I play by the rules.""
Apparently the sexism against Serena Williams dates back to 2009 when she was fined for insulting a female official

Tennis: Serena fined US$17,000 after US Open final outburst - "Serena Williams has been fined US$17,000 by the US Tennis Association in the wake of her outburst during a controversial US Open final loss to Japan's Naomi Osaka. The American star was fined for coaching, racquet abuse and for verbal abuse when she accused umpire Carlos Ramos of being "a thief" during Saturday's stormy final. Williams was incensed at the coaching violation, although coach Patrick Mouratoglou, sitting in her box, admitted that he was coaching when he moved his hands. That violation carried a US$4,000 fine, while a second violation for racquet abuse - after she smashed her racquet after dropping her serve in the fifth game of the second set - cost her US$3,000. The second violation also cost her a point in the match, sparking her renewed verbal attack on Ramos"

‘Terrible Disservice To Women’s Rights’ — Here Are The Reactions To Serena Williams’ US Open Meltdown - "Australian journalists Peter Lalor and Caroline Wilson were in the minority in their criticism of Williams. “It was her McEnroe moment, it was hard to watch,” Lalor said on “Offsiders” ABC Sunday morning. “Nobody owes you an apology, you owe a lot of people an apology and when you calm down, I hope you realize that.” “The comment about having a daughter, women around the world would have cringed at that,” Wilson said. “This is a woman who threatened to shove a ball down an umpire’s throat and was only fined $10,000. This is a woman who, again, verbally threatened a linesman in 2014. People have not stood up to Serena Williams.”"

For Serena Williams, a Memorable U.S. Open Final for the Wrong Reasons - The New York Times - "Ramos, who works primarily on the men’s tour, is known for being one of the strictest umpires, notably giving time violations to the slow-moving Rafael Nadal where other umpires are more lax. “I say it with sadness, but he is an umpire who scrutinizes me more and who fixates on me more,” Nadal said of Ramos after a match at the French Open last year. “He also pressured me about coaching. I have respect for him, and all I ask is for that to be reciprocated.”... Williams said: “I can’t sit here and say I wouldn’t say he’s a thief, because I thought he took a game from me. But I’ve seen other men call other umpires several things. I’m here fighting for women’s rights and for women’s equality and for all kinds of stuff. For me to say ‘thief’ and for him to take a game, it made me feel like it was a sexist remark. He’s never taken a game from a man because they said ‘thief.’”... Williams’s assertion that female players are policed more than male players is difficult to prove. At this year’s Open, men have received 23 fines for code violations, compared with nine for women. Most of the sport’s infamous brats have been men, and they have often been punished for bad behavior. John McEnroe, the best-known instigator, was frequently assessed point and game penalties during his career. He was disqualified from a fourth-round match at the 1990 Australian Open after a series of outbursts. Fabio Fognini, another serial offender, was ejected from the United States Open last year for making crude remarks in Italian about a female chair umpire during a first-round match... For Williams, the issues are more complicated, given her history of controversy at the tournament... In 2011, in the final against Samantha Stosur, Williams celebrated what she thought was a winning shot too early, and then reacted with indignation to a hindrance call assessed by the chair umpire Eva Asderaki, calling her “a hater” and “unattractive inside.” Williams lost that match, too."
Sexism (which we know can only be against women) means giving men more fines than women

The furore over Serena Williams exposes the double standards and invisible structures of our society
Basically because Serena Williams is black and has suffered racism in the past her tantrum was justified
Fortunately most of the comments are aghast

Meltdown: Official Says Tennis Star Serena Williams Told Her "I Will Kill You"

Gad Saad - Posts - "The cretin intellectual terrorist @mzemilycain has now apparently deleted her Twitter account after trying to get me fired at @concordia because she did not like the fact that I was critical of @serenawilliams' antics at yesterdays' @usopen final. Truly unbelievable."

Artist Mark Knight Defends Cartoon of Serena Williams - "Herald Sun artist Mark Knight tweeted a drawing showing an exaggerated caricature of Williams stomping on her tennis racket with a pacifier near her feet — which many felt was comparable to the stereotypes seen in anti-black political cartoons from the Jim Crow-era of America... In the background of Knight’s cartoon, an umpire is seen asking Williams’ opponent to let the star win. It isn’t clear whether the drawing of the white and blonde player is meant to represent Osaka, who is the daughter of a Haitian father and a Japanese mother."... Knight defended himself by tweeting out another recent cartoon he’d drawn of male Australian player, Nick Kyrgios. “Here’s a cartoon I drew a few days before when Australian male tennis player Kyrgios at the US Open was behaving badly,” Knight tweeted, along with the cartoon. “Don’t bring gender into it when it’s all about behaviour. I’ll accept your apology in writing.”"
Equality is about treating people differently based on race
Moral of the story: don't caricature black people. Only caricature white people since you won't be called racist for doing the same thing
It seems the artist anticipated this criticism by having a white player in the background but of course this is further slammed as "whitewashing"

Serena Williams cartoon: Herald Sun publishes defiant front page defending Mark Knight - "The Herald Sun newspaper has republished its controversial cartoon of tennis star Serena Williams on a defiant front page in which it attacked its critics and foreshadowed a future where satire is outlawed. "WELCOME TO PC WORLD," read the paper's headline, over a collection of Mark Knight cartoons, including the depiction of Williams spitting a dummy and stamping on her racquet... "a front page that has pictures like Donald Trump being caricatured for his hair, Tony Abbott being caricatured for his big ears, you know the Prime Minister being portrayed as a muppet, kind of this innuendo that he's having his strings pulled""

Serena Williams cartoon: Mark Knight discovers it’s dangerous being funny - "If Williams were not an African-American female, Knight’s cartoon would have gone unnoticed outside his immediate newspaper readership and social media followers. He didn’t comment on anything but her behaviour. I’m struggling to figure out just what Knight’s crime is. From what I can tell, his crime is that he drew Williams as an African American woman, complete with her powerful, muscular build with all the features that clearly identify Williams as … Williams. Racist! How dare he! What was he supposed to draw? An old white angry dude?... even champions are not infallible. They’re not off limits simply because they’re champions, or female, or African. I’ve known Knight since we were both 18-year-old cadets at Fairfax in Sydney, too many years ago than either of us will care to admit. I still haven’t figured out his political leanings. That’s because he dishes out his humour to all sides fairly and equally... equality mean that all people should be treated equally in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of cartoonists. Judge a person not on the colour of their skin but on the basis of their behaviour or idiocy, as Knight certainly did when it came to Serena Williams, as he does to Trump... To refuse to draw an African female simply because she’s an African female would indeed be sexist and racist. It would also be safer. There’s got to be an easier way to earn a living."

Tennis umpires consider forming union following Serena Williams storm - "The game’s top umpires are considering forming a union because they believe Carlos Ramos was “hung out to dry” by the authorities during and after the US Open women’s final despite upholding the rules in sanctioning Serena Williams. Many officials were also left angry with the fact that the International Tennis Federation took nearly 48 hours to defend Ramos, on Monday afternoon, by which time the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) and United States Tennis Association (USTA) had supported Williams’s claims of sexism after she was given a game penalty for her behaviour during her defeat by Naomi Osaka... the International Tennis Federation, for whom Ramos is a contracted gold badge umpire, belatedly issued a statement to support his handling of the final. It confirmed that, under the grand slam rulebook, all three violations he issued against Williams – following the three-step penalty process of warning-point-game – were correct. “Carlos Ramos is one of the most experienced and respected umpires in tennis,” the statement said. “Mr Ramos’s decisions were in accordance with the relevant rules and were reaffirmed by the US Open’s decision to fine Ms Williams for the three offences.”... Ramos... told the newspaper that he had avoided walking the streets of New York on Sunday to avoid any “complicated situations”"
Presumably they're all sexist

Wimbledon 2018 - How some drug testing figures really pan out in tennis - "Over the past five years, Williams has been drug tested in the same range as other top tennis players, according to the most recent statistics published by the International Tennis Federation, the global governing body and primary testing authority of the sport... "Across the sporting world, the top athletes are always going to be tested more than lower-ranked athletes, that's just the nature of the beast""
In response to claims that it's sexist and/or racist that she's tested more frequently than other people

Serena was no victim of racism or sexism - "So hypnotised by gender and race have liberal leftists become that they failed to see what really went on here and what really should disconcert them: the spectacle of an entitled multimillionaire using and abusing her position of power in front of a global audience to intimidate, threaten and bully someone of a lower social standing. That is the real disgrace of this incident. This was class warfare from the top down."

Good Ideas Vs Bad Ideas: Against The Regressive Left, Islamists & Racists - "Analysis of a tantrum: Serena Williams
I ‘ve known many abusive alpha feminist types like Serena and I recognise these behaviours:
1) Becoming emotional when things don't go well
2) Blaming the other person and avoiding personal accountability
3) Turning on the tactical tears
4) Invoking children as 'hers' and using them as a catalyst to change her (distorted) opinion into some irrefutable truth
5) Calling for a higher authority to referee and then misrepresenting events into a completely fabricated narrative that airbrushes her culpability
6) Vindictive threats that transcend reason and are disproportionate and motivated by revenge, not 'justice'
I hope everyone sees through this type of manipulative behaviour"

Opinion | Martina Navratilova: What Serena Got Wrong - The New York Times - "I don’t believe it’s a good idea to apply a standard of “If men can get away with it, women should be able to, too.” Rather, I think the question we have to ask ourselves is this: What is the right way to behave to honor our sport and to respect our opponents?... Ms. Williams opted to argue about this: She insisted that she didn’t cheat, she wasn’t coached, and therefore she shouldn’t have been docked. But it doesn’t matter whether she knew she was receiving coaching. She was being coached, as Mr. Mouratoglou admitted after the match, and whether she knew it or not is moot. So at this stage, she had been given a warning — one that couldn’t be dismissed retroactively — and had smashed her racket, an automatic violation. Mr. Ramos, effectively, had no choice but to dock her a point. It was here that Ms. Williams really started to lose the plot... Martina Navratilova... There have been many times when I was playing that I wanted to break my racket into a thousand pieces. Then I thought about the kids watching. And I grudgingly held on to that racket."
Feminism means women aspiring to be as bad as men (allegedly) are
Too bad even though Martina Navratilova is female and "a broadcaster, former tennis champion and human rights activist", she is also white and thus in this situation automatically wrong

'You will never be on another court of mine' - Read the full transcript of Serena Williams' furious rant at US Open final - "You will never, ever, ever be on another court of mine as long as you live. You are the liar. When are you going to give me my apology? You owe me an apology."

Addendum:
Under fire umpire Carlos Ramos acted at all times with integrity, says ITF following Serena Williams sexism row - "The strong impression was of two organisations who benefit from Williams’s star power bending over backwards to appease her, at the expense of the less celebrated Ramos. This was a dangerous message to send out to other umpires: take on a big name and we will disown you. The sexism narrative also failed to reflect the statistics from the US Open, which showed 86 code violations were handed out to male players in the course of the fortnight, but only 22 to women. Ramos is arguably the strictest umpire on the circuit. During his 30-year career, he has had previous run-ins with Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, among others. Until last weekend, though, his even-handedness had never been impugned."