Maggie's Farm

We just witnessed an historic US Open finish in more ways that one.  Not only did Naomi Osaka win the Japan's first title in a major tournament, but Serena Williams managed to overshadow this feat with her tirades and accusations of a double standard.  Is there a double standard in tennis?  It depends on what you mean.  If I am to understand Serena, she gets fined for bad language and behavior while men get away with it.

It is possible, but by no means probable, that men do behave poorly more and it is overlooked.  But evidence seems to exist to the contrary.  After all, it's rare to see a woman suspended for bad behavior (in fact, I have not found any examples of it) on the court.  With men, it's a fairly common experience.  Connors, McEnroe, Fognini are only a few who were assessed points, games, fines and/or suspended.  These are a few of the higher-profile players who have suffered, but it's by no means rare or unusual.

I have seen, in person, quite a few tennis matches.  I have rarely seen women assessed penalties.  I can't remember all the times I've seen men assessed, mainly because it's happened frequently enough for me to have forgotten.  In general, female players are better behaved than the men.  If Serena's claim is that men behave badly more often and are not assessed penalties, that's going to be difficult to back up.  However, what evidence exists indicates she's very wrong.  

The real question is are women held to higher standards?  I'd argue no, because I've watched many female tennis players berate judges without being assessed penalties.  I've seen it happen at least as often as I've seen men berate judges without a penalty.  I think commenting there is a double standard, though, lacks historical context.

To a large degree, the harshness of today's penalties are a result of the bad behavior of players like Nastase, Connors and McEnroe.  Tennis' image was taking a beating when these players began creating a new image of 'bad boy' tennis.  They were penalized and fined in the hopes of cleaning up that image, but they were good enough and wealthy enough to overlook it and keep going.  Female players, in the 70s and 80s, didn't earn the same level of prize money, though they probably could have waved fines off as easily as men, if they were assessed.  Still, one player who was far more outspoken and outrageous than Serena, Martina Navratilova, points out that Serena is wrong about her penalty.  Navratilova believes (again, without fact to back up the claim) there is a double standard, but just because it exists doesn't mean it justifies behaving the way Serena did.  Meanwhile, Navratilova never faced as severe penalties as those faced by Mac and Connors.  I saw her play many times, and she was generally good about maintaining her composure - the sign of a great athlete, in my opinion - and that has a lot to do with the reason there may seem to be a double standard.  Great athletes usually are good at maintaining their composure.

The reality is, as a friend of mine said, "The facts don't matter in anything anymore.  The only thing that matters is the reaction of social media and the emotions it can generate."  This seems to be true.  Emotional ties seem to trump reality.  When McEnroe - who was penalized frequently - says "Serena's right" people will take him at his word.  But his word isn't accounting for the fact that he created the situation Serena faces, and that he was penalized more harshly than she was. 

What we're going to wind up seeing is a reaction to a generalized 'feeling' that somehow there is a double standard, even if the facts indicate otherwise.  Social media works on feelings, not facts, which is one reason the firms running social media have issues trying to determine what is 'real' news and what is 'fake' news.  Serena's double standard is fake news, as is any news which is generated by, or relies on, emotions for support in defiance of fact. 

I'm not commenting that Nike's Kaepernick ad will hurt them financially.  So far, it has hurt them (in their stock price) but people are people and will buy things for a variety of reasons.  Using Kaepernick as a 'theme' is, however, polarizing on many levels.  For some people, the ad may spur sales.  For many others, the ad will lead them to spurn the brand.  If we look back at the Chick-fil-A and In 'n Out 'boycotts', we're resolved to recognize boycotts which are designed to exact retribution will often result in exactly nothing to harm a firm.

The difference with Nike was their ad is not a perceived slight.  It's deliberately offensive.  Nike raised the stakes in the marketing wars, and I don't think what they did will benefit them.  This wasn't just a misguided statement or an ill-conceived donation.  This was taking the Social Justice Warrior mentality and turning it into and ad.  It's big question - can social justice be branded?  Can the "revolution" of Progressive Thought be promoted in an ad campaign.  I'd say no, and the fruits of this campaign may have people talking about Nike...but Nike doesn't need people to be talking about them in this fashion.

Let's start from the beginning.  Kaepernick and other players have the right to kneel during the anthem.  We all do.  Excoriating them for this is silly, uninformed, and ignores the right to free speech.  So set that aside.  Let's discuss the real problem, which is the outcome of that decision to kneel, because that's where Nike messed up.  They took a relatively benign issue, and amped it up on steroids.

The NFL has a Game Day Operations Policy it chose to not implement, which stipulates players which do not stand for the anthem MAY be fined.  Not enforcing this has hurt the NFL's image and proved it to be a business at the mercy of its employees' political views.  Try breaking YOUR employers' policies and see what happens.  Good luck with that.  But, hey - it's the NFL, and these guys are "STARS".  So yeah, I guess if you have no backbone, you can ignore your own policies and assume everything will turn out fine.

The fiftieth anniversary of Woodstock is creeping up on us, and the 49th anniversary passed with barely a mention.  That's probably how it should be.  Maybe not, though.  Woodstock is viewed differently by many people.  For some it was a political event.  For me it was purely music and culture.  Regardless of how it's viewed, the history is deep, it resonates with different generations, and it was full of lessons.  It was a turning point.  

I was only 7 at the time.  I remember it as 'an event'.  At the time, I remember some vague political commentary surrounding it, I was too young to really care.  The only thing I was aware of was visiting my cousins in the nearby town where they lived, and thinking the dirty hippies were scary.

Several years ago, I moved closer to the empty nest phase of life, having dropped my second son off at Syracuse (followed in dad's footsteps) for his freshman year.  I had fun regaling him with my past life experiences.  It was a period of time when past lives were looming.  Mrs. Bulldog and I had been married 22 years, and only 2 had been sans children.  That's a big gap, and if you've had kids you know what I'm talking about.  

A former co-worker, who had been unemployed at that time, landed a job that started in September.  He asked if I wanted to take a trip up to Bethel and see the Woodstock museum.  I asked my wife if she had any interest, she didn't, so I signed on with him and one other former co-worker to take in some cultural history.  Another bit of a past life.