The Rings of Power: Amazon's Weaponization of Tolkien and Tokens

Oligarch Jeff “Sauron” Bezos is using craven culture war issues like “diversity, inclusion and representation” to deceive liberals/progressives into fighting for his diabolical corporation and the 1%.

The Agenda. The relentless, tedious, ever-present Agenda, has come to Middle-Earth.

Amazon’s long-awaited, highly-anticipated, extraordinarily expensive, Lord of the Rings tv series, The Rings of Power, has finally arrived, and thus far it is only notable for its artistic shortcomings and its slavish commitment to the insidious Agenda of diversity, inclusion and representation over quality.

Amazon’s Sauron-in-Chief, Jeffrey Bezos, wanted his own Game of Thrones type fantasy series, so he paid $250 million for the rights to the appendices from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and committed upwards of a billion dollars of his sweatshop empire’s gains for five seasons of elves, dwarves, hobbits (harfoots) and orcs.  

The first two episodes of the series premiered on Amazon Prime Video Thursday September 1st, and they are, to be kind, rather uninspiring. The series may well improve dramatically over the next six episodes of season one, I certainly hope it does, but thus far it has been slow and rather unsteady going.

What is most enlightening about The Rings of Power though is that the heated discussion around the show is much more energetic than the show itself.

In case you haven’t heard, the series has a diverse cast of “actors of color”, and features three feminist heroines as its leads, which some argue is contrary to the source material written by J.R.R. Tolkien.

This debate around the show’s “diverse” casting and its centering of three female leads, which has infuriated some and delighted others, at least has passion, whereas The Rings of Power feels diabolically staid and sterile.

THE PLAYBOOK

As for that debate and the ever-insistent Agenda, the reality is that for Amazon, or any studio releasing a product into the public, controversy around casting “minority” actors and featuring female leads is a feature, not a bug.

This is all part of the plan and right out of a well-worn playbook.

The playbook is as follows.

1.   Cast “actors of color” or women in roles that traditionally would be played by white actors or men and heavily market the “diverse and inclusive” casting.

2.   Claim victimhood, which in our current era conveys cultural status, by alleging “racist/sexist attacks” on the diverse cast leading up to the premiere of the film or series.

3.   Create the paradigm where liberals/progressives feel that supporting the film/series is a way for them to signal their virtue and believe they are being actively “anti-racist/anti-sexist” (in other words it makes them feel like they’re actually fighting injustice by watching a movie or tv show).

4.   Stigmatize all criticism of the film/tv show by conflating criticism of the film/series with racism/sexism, which results in critiques of any kind from fans and professional critics being stifled and self-censored.

5.   Claim all negative fan reviews on various review aggregator sites are the result of “review bombing” by racist/sexist trolls on have banned or banished.

6.   As the controversy heightens, put out inflated viewership numbers as well as a carefully crafted statement declaring the parent company/studio “stands with” the diverse cast and against racism of all kinds.

7. Declare moral victory (“we did the right thing!”) no matter how spectacularly the film/tv show fails.

That’s the basics of the playbook, which Disney and Amazon in particular, have used extensively in recent years.

THE OBJECTIVE

These manufactured racial/gender cultural conflagrations and their paradigm of stigmatizing criticism as racism/sexism, are meant to trigger conservatives/traditionalist into attacking and liberals and progressives into defending.

The most troubling aspect is the libneral/progressives who are triggered into vociferously defending a corporate entertainment product, and by default unconsciously or consciously aligning with the nefarious corporation behind the film/tv product, all because a film/tv series is now nothing more than a proxy battle in the culture war.

In the case of The Rings of Power, the racial/gender casting issue is meant to inflame conservatives/traditionalist and actually distract liberals/progressives from a bigger issue. Instead of noticing that Amazon is a company that exploits its workers to a shocking and disgusting degree and that Bezos is one of the most deplorable people on the planet, liberals/progressives now go to battle for their ideological opponents, in this case Amazon and billionaire Bezos, rather than against them.

This distractionary tactic works incredibly well because liberal/progressives have been conditioned to downplay tangible economic issues in favor of more amorphous, emotionally resonant issues like race, gender and sexual orientation.

In addition, liberals/progressives have also been conditioned to never actually debate or discuss these topics but rather simply resort to bigoteering and calling anyone and everyone who disagrees with you a racist/sexist. In other words, no argument need be made, all one has to do is give a reflexive display of righteousness, virtue signal and claim victory.

The liberals/progressives currently baring their teeth to alleged “racists” and “sexists” over The Rings of Power, are the ones who should, in theory, be outside Bezos’ mansion with pitchforks and torches (think of how hyper-racialization in our cultural politics completely destroyed the Occupy Wall Street movement and spirit), or at least trying to hold Amazon’s feet to the fire in terms of unionization, not defending them.

THE EVIDENCE

Make no mistake, all of this outrage and controversy is staged and manufactured for corporate benefit. The playbook is obvious.

If Amazon had wanted to make gobs of money it could have followed the very clear path already cleared by director Peter Jackson, who made three Lord of the Rings movies and three Hobbit movies which in total made roughly $6 billion.

But instead, Amazon pushed aside Jackson and decided to go for social engineering rather than servicing Tolkien fans who have proven their loyalty and commitment to mostly faithful adaptations.

This is similar to how Disney continuously chooses to alienate its Marvel and Star Wars fans with social engineering instead of giving them what worked in the past, which is what they want and what they will gladly fork over their money for.

Also note how Amazon has flexed its muscles to get media outlets to rush out dubious sob stories from The Rings of Power cast about allegedly facing “racist” or “sexist” backlash prior to the series premiere, just like Disney does with every Marvel and Star Wars movie or series.

Also notice how Amazon, like Disney before them, shouts from the rooftops about the insidious racist “review bombing” against The Rings of Power on rotten tomatoes. Amazon has gone so far as to halt reviews of the series being placed on the Amazon website in order to stifle “racist trolls”.

Of course, there’s no proof that any review bombing is going on, or that people leaving negative reviews are racist…but that reality is inconvenient to Amazon and so it isn’t just ignored, but disparaged. And as an aside, why isn’t it ever considered review bombing when it is positive reviews inundating rotten tomatoes?

In keeping with the playbook, Amazon claimed without evidence that 25 million viewers watched the premier episode of The Rings of Power (this is contradicted by a SambaTV report with significantly lower viewership numbers – 1.8 million in US). Amazon also just put out a brave statement saying they stand with their actors of color and reject all “racist attacks” from deplorable fans – who they claim aren’t really fans at all. As Dan Rather would say, “courage”.

THE AGENDA

The fact is that Amazon sullying Tolkien’s timeless myth with the insipid cultural politics of today is not the least bit shocking considering that in 2021 Amazon Studios released its “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” playbook which lays out the rules and regulations regarding diversity quotas (50% of all creative roles must be women and/or from under-represented groups) on all Amazon Studio projects.

In other words, the plan all along was to turn Tolkien into tokens for Amazon and Bezos’ cultural political gain. They tried the same thing with their deservedly-much-maligned and ultimately ignored fantasy series The Wheel of Time.  Of course, to speak this obvious truth is met with even more shrill cries of “racist!” and “sexist!”

Amazon’s “Diversity, Inclusion and Representation” playbook makes it very clear that the company is committed to a cultural/political agenda and is not interested in the quality of their product or…and this is still shocking to consider…how much money it makes in its entertainment division.

Of course, one wonders if Amazon and Disney and all the rest will hit a point where their social engineering becomes too financially untenable to continue?

The answer to that might be as simple as “get woke, go broke”. Either that or this social engineering is here to stay because these entertainment behemoths are too big to fail and will only expand their monopolies and eliminate all opposing voices. The current sorry, sycophantic state of professional film/tv criticism indicates they’re well on their way to snuffing out dissent.

THE LAPDOG

The easily manipulated liberal/progressive Pavlovian response to all things race and gender related is perfectly summed up in a review of The Rings of Power from LA Times critic Robert Lloyd. Lloyd reveals his inability to actually think, nevermind have an original thought, by regurgitating the most weak-kneed, shallow and vacuous drivel imaginable.

For example, Lloyd writes of The Rings of Power,

“And sometimes (some) fans defend the wrong things, as when attacking the production for its foregrounding of female roles and casting actors of color where Tolkien (and Jackson, following his lead) only saw white.”

Tolkien “only saw white” because he was writing a myth for Northern Europeans using folklore from those regions where mostly, if not all, of the people are white. It should also be noted that Tolkien created the entire Lord of the Rings universe…so it’s his and his vision. Peter Jackson, director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, only saw white because he was, shock of shocks, trying to stay true to Tolkien’s written word.

Lloyd then actually unintentionally makes the case that the fans now being labelled “racist” have made all along, that Tolkien’s work is clearly designed as a founding myth for Norther Europeans/English, and casting it with “people of color” undermines the author’s intent.

“Evidence has been advanced to show that Tolkien was anti-racist in life, but there is no getting around the fact that in his books, Northern European types save the day from swarthy types from the South and East, who are characterized with giant elephants and (as in Jackson’s “The Return of the King”) quasi-Arabic garb.”

Lloyd’s use of the term “anti-racist” is revealing, as it’s a nod to his political tribe that he has “done all the reading”, including Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s egregiously vapid book How to be an Anti-Racist.

It’s also telling that the haughty and insolent Lloyd still manages, despite “evidence…that Tolkien was anti-racist” to smear the great author as a racist in the same sentence.

Lloyd then lets readers know that he’s truly one of the good white guys when he writes,

“To be honest, I was a little worried the series would continue in that distasteful vein and happy to see that it did not; Tolkien, some would say, was just a man of his time, but these are different times.”

Bravo Mr. Lloyd on the virtue signal! It’s glorious how Lloyd rides in on his white steed and tells us that he’s glad that Tolkien’s “distasteful” approach when writing one of the greatest selling books of all-time, has been discarded, which makes him “happy”. Lloyd sounds like like a toddler getting ice cream after his tantrum forces his parents to take the filet mignon away.

Lloyd then makes his intellectual insipidness completely clear as he writes,

“(I reject out of hand all arguments that employ the word “woke” or use “diversity” in a negative sense.)”

Replace the words “woke” and “diversity” with “Jesus freak” and “Christ” and this is the type of thing you’d say if you were some backwards ass bible-thumper.

Rejecting the notion that “diversity” can be anything but good is an indicator of one’s blind faith and strict adherence to dogma, not someone with a serious and vibrant intellectual yearning. “Diversity” to the woke is like the divinity of Christ to the Christian. It can never be up for debate. It only just is…and it is always good.

God knows I fear nothing more than being dismissed by Lloyd as an unserious critic, but I must say, Lloyd’s blanket banning of the term “woke” and his refusal to consider the nuances of “diversity” clearly outs him as a devout member of the Church of Wokeness and a frivolous, insignificant thinker to boot.

What is most amusing is that Lloyd then follows this supercilious inanity up with an admission that The Rings of Power does, in fact, do what many of the alleged “racists” claim it does.

“The Rings of Power” does, in a few instances, too obviously adopt the language of modern American prejudice to make a point, but that is a matter of poor writing rather than a bad idea.”

Because Lloyd is so self-righteous and has spent so much energy signaling his virtue, he believes he can make the same complaint other people have made – that the show is too contemporary in its cultural politics, but avoid being labelled “racist”, even as he himself calls those people with the same opinion as him “racist”. Incredible.

CONCLUSION

In the final analysis, all of this venting and vexing about “diversity’ and “inclusion” and “representation” is just meant to divide and distract.

Amazon uses the same bigoteering, divide and conquer playbook as Disney and every other major corporation in America which were so quick to shout “Black Lives Matter!” when it was a convenient way to signal their virtue and cover their asses. This is the same playbook the ruling elite use to maintain the corrupt power structure by keeping the proles at bay and constantly at each other’s throats.

Divide and conquer has kept the oligarchs and the American aristocracy on the throne of power time immemorial. And will continue to do so because the myopic, historically illiterate American populace is being relentlessly indoctrinated by an insidiously deceptive corporate media day in and day out, thus rendering the majority of Americans, who are emotionalist fools, completely incapable of any critical thought.

Ultimately, the sub-par series The Rings of Power is not entertaining, but it is enlightening, because it’s an obvious example of the strings of power being pulled by the elites to manipulate people into fighting for their true enemy (Amazon and Bezos), rather than against them.

©2022

'Patron Saint of Incels'? Woke Outrage over Joker is a Bad Joke

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 47 seconds

Critics and woke people are up in arms over Joker because they think “evil” white men will like it and be inspired to kill.

It used to be that it was right-wingers who would get outraged over movies they deemed “dangerous” because they offended their delicate sensibilities, Last Temptation of Christ and Brokeback Mountain being prime examples. Now it is left-wing scolds who reflexively denounce movies they find “problematic”, with the highly anticipated Joker having raised their self-righteous ire.

Joker opens on October 4th and is directed by Todd Phillips and stars Joaquin Phoenix. The highly anticipated movie is inspired by Martin Scorsese’s films Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy and is thought to be a breath of fresh air in the comic book genre and the antithesis of the corporate Marvel movies. Joker tells the story of Arthur Fleck, a disaffected white man who eventually becomes Batman’s nemesis, the super villain Joker.

Fleck being white has ignited a moral panic over Joker, because according to woke twitter, white men are inherently violent, and so Joker is dangerous as it will act as a pied piper leading lonely white men to commit Joker-esque mass shootings.

The criticisms of Joker on twitter are stunning for the shameless level of scorn and hatred brazenly heaped upon white men.

Tweets saying “I don’t want to be around any of the lonely white boys who relate to it”, and “Joker movie is starting to look like a sympathetic tale of a ‘wronged by society’ white dude and their entitlement to violence” and “in a time of increasing violence perpetrated by disaffected white men, is it really the best thing to keep making movies that portray disaffected white men doing violence as sympathetic?”, highlight the racial animus animating the Joker moral panic. It is inconceivable that such venom would be acceptable against any other racial group, such as African-Americans or Muslims.

The Joker panic has spread like a contagion from twitter to the real world, where police have vowed to increase their presence at theatres, and some cinemas are banning ticket holders who wear costumes.

The US Army and the FBI have issued a warning that some “incels” or involuntary celibates, may violently target screenings of Joker.

Family members of victims of the 2012 Aurora, Colorado movie theatre shooting, have even written a letter to Warner Brothers, conveying their concerns over Joker and imploring the studio to support anti-gun causes. This is puzzling as the Aurora tragedy was during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises, which didn’t feature the Joker, and while some early reports claimed the shooter dressed like the Joker and declared,  “I am the Joker”, those reports have been thoroughly debunked. This conflating of Joker with Aurora reveals the vacuity of the frenzy.

The hysteria around Joker has infected American film critics as well. When Joker premiered at the prestigious Venice Film Festival it received a twenty-minute ovation and won the coveted Golden Lion for best picture. The last two Golden Lion winners, Roma and The Shape of Water, went on to be nominated for twenty-three Oscars combined, winning seven. Joker’s reception at Venice would seem to be indicative of the film’s artistic bona fides, but American critics, who are more interested in pretentious pandering and virtue signaling, strongly disagree.

Stephanie Zacharek of Time, said of Joker, “the aggressive and possibly irresponsible idiocy of Joker is his (director Phillips) alone to answer for”.

Zacharek goes on to state that Arthur Fleck, “could easily be adopted as the patron saint of incels.”

Anthony Lane of The New Yorker opined, “I happen to dislike the film as heartily as anything I’ve seen in the past decade…”

David Edelstein of Vulture, described the film as “morally blech”, then went full on Godwin’s law in his review when he declared, “As Hannah Arendt saw banality in the supposed evil of Nazi Adolf Eichmann, I see in Joker an attempt to elevate nerdy revenge to the plane of myth.”

Film critics getting the vapors over a movie is nothing new, as cinema history is riddled with fraught hyperbole over “dangerous” movies.

In 1955 New York Times critic Bosley Crowther bemoaned Rebel Without a Cause because “it is a violent, brutal and disturbing picture.”

In 1971 esteemed critic Pauline Kael decried A Clockwork Orange, denouncing the film as “corrupt” and describing director Stanley Kubrick as “a pornographer”.

In 1989, Joe Klein, a critic for New York wrote an infamous piece on Spike Lee’s iconic film Do the Right Thing. Klein wrote, “If Lee does hook large black audiences, there’s a good chance the message they take from the film will increase racial tensions…if they react violently – which can’t be ruled out…”

Klein went on to write that the sole message black teens would take from the film was “The police are your enemy” and “White people are your enemy”.

In a great example of the intoxicating power of the Joker moral panic, Boston Globe film critic Ty Burr wrote an article about Joker where he references Klein’s historically embarrassing take on Do the Right Thing, but instead of using Klein’s egregiously myopic article as a cautionary tale, Burr instead embraces the reflexive emotionalism of the Joker moral panic.

Burr declares of Joker, ““Is it “reckless”? Honestly, in my opinion, yeah, and if that makes me this year’s Joe Klein, so be it. To release into this America at this time a power fantasy that celebrates — that’s right, Warner Bros., celebrates — a mocked loner turned locked-and-loaded avenging angel is an act of willful corporate naivete at best, complicity at worst, and blindness in the middle”

As Burr concedes in his article, there is no causal link between violent movies or video games and mass shootings, and yet because Burr “feels” uneasy, he deems Joker guilty of being “dangerous”.

The bottom line is this, there have been shootings before Joker, and unfortunately, there will certainly be shootings after Joker, but Joker will not “cause” anyone to kill people. Human beings will be violent not because of movies but because they are human beings. As Kubrick so eloquently showed us in 2001: A Space Odyssey, evolution has not removed our violent impulse, only given us better weapons.

The purpose of art is to, sometimes uncomfortably, examine humanity and reflect the world in which it exists, and by examining and reflecting, hopefully give the audience a deeper insight and understanding of themselves, their fellow humans and the world in which they inhabit. I have not seen Joker, so I don’t know if it does those things well, but from the plethora of negative reviews I’ve read from American critics, their problem with Joker is that it does those things all too well.

These critics, both professional and amateur, prefer not to examine the origins of the isolation, alienation and rage felt by disaffected white working class males who are inundated with messages from the media and the education system that stigmatize and/or criminalize whiteness and traditional masculinity.

They want to ignore or malign these men, particularly those in middle age, even though they are dying from deaths of despair (suicide, drug overdose or alcoholism) at alarming rates that have more than doubled over the last twenty years.

Joker is not a clarion call to white male violence, it is a desperate attempt at a diagnosis of the pandemic that is killing white men and will eventually kill America.

Joker’s effete and effeminate critics, the eunuchs sprawled on fainting couches at the thought of having to bear a cinematic meditation on the heart of darkness at the center of an iconic super villain, are a bad joke. Their insidiously overwrought outrage and moral panic over Joker exposes their egregious unworthiness as thinkers and critics, and frankly, the vapid unseriousness of our culture.

 A VERSION OF THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON OCTOBER 1, 2019 AT RT.

© 2019

Serena Williams and her Basket of Deplorables

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes 04 seconds

On Saturday, September 8th, Naomi Osaka won the Women’s U.S. Open Tennis Championship by trouncing Serena Williams in resounding fashion. Instead of the media and fans focusing on the sublime athletic brilliance that was Osaka, they instead focused on Serena Williams, which is just how Serena wanted it.

WHAT HAPPENED

The big show at the U.S. Women’s Open final wasn’t Naomi Osaka’s dismantling of the 23 time Grand Slam champion Serena Williams, it was Serena William’s rage-fueled meltdown and tirade against Chair Umpire Carlos Ramos.

What instigated Serena’s anger towards Ramos was that he had the temerity to actually hold Serena to the rules of tennis when he properly issued her a warning after Serena’s coach was caught coaching her in the first set, which is clearly against the established rules.

Serena claimed she wasn’t being coached and that Ramos was maligning her integrity by insinuating she was cheating, which infuriated her because as she was quick to point out, she “is a mother”…which I guess for some reason means she cannot cheat since mother’s are infallible and morally incorruptible

Later in the match after losing another game, Serena slammed her racket on the ground in frustration, breaking her racket, which again, is explicitly against the rules in tennis, so Ramos did what he was obligated to do and called Serena on her violation. Due to the fact that it was her second violation of the match, the first being the coaching, Serena was docked a point to start the next game.

Serena then returned to arguing with Ramos about the coaching call and how unfair it was, but to no avail, the lost point stayed lost. As the match progressed from there and it became even more glaringly obvious that Serena was going to lose, she relentlessly berated Ramos at every turn and during a change over lit into him, threatening he would never be on one of “her courts” ever again. She then called him “a thief” for having stolen a point from her, and Ramos cited her for the third time for a violation, this time for verbal abuse, which according to the rules of tennis, the third violation results in a loss of an entire game.

At that point Serena went into full victim mode and called for the tournament officials, who came out and listened to her argument that Ramos was being sexist and she was being punished simply because she was a woman. Serena said that men do much worse but never face sanctions. She claimed that Ramos was doing this to her because she was a woman. The Open officials seemed deferential to Serena, but never changed the ruling, and soon, amid a cavalcade of boos, the match re-started and Serena was finally beaten by Osaka and the tournament was over and Serena was the loser.

Sadly, things only got worse from there and it wasn’t just Serena being exposed as a deplorable human being. As the trophy ceremony went on, the crowd booed continuously, which caused Naomi Osaka to never break a smile and actually cry, not tears of joy, but tears of sadness, after having won the tournament fair and square.

DEMONSTRABLY WRONG

Serena’s wail of victimhood during the match and her argument that sexism was responsible for her being punished for violating the rules was repulsive, disgusting, shameless, contrived and manipulative…and also demonstrably wrong.

To start, Serena claimed she wasn’t being coached, but in the moment, during the live broadcast of the event, her coach admitted he was coaching her, which exposes Serena to charges of not only being a cheat but a liar. The coach’s defense was that “everybody does it”, which is a pretty weak argument.

In addition, umpire Carlos Ramos is notorious for being a stickler for the rules, a trait much needed in an umpire, and many of the top men’s players like Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Novak Djokavic have had run-ins with him over his strict adherence to the rules, but none of those men ever escalated their disagreements like Serena Williams did.

More damning evidence against Serena came to light this past weekend when the New York Times released a study complied by officials at Grand Slam tournaments that shows that men are fined proportionally more often than the women. For instance, over the last twenty years (1998-2018) at Grand Slam events (Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, U.S. Open), men have been fined 646 times for racket abuse and 287 times for unsportsmanlike conduct while women have been fined for the same offenses 99 and 67 times respectively. In terms of verbal abuse, the violation that capped off Serena’s meltdown, men have been fined 62 times over the last twenty years and women 16 times.

While men do play more tennis in Grand Slam tournaments, with more qualifying spots and playing best of five set matches as opposed to the women’s best of three, the disparity in terms of fines for men is well beyond the greater percentage of tennis they play.

SERENA TRUMP

The reality of the situation is this, Serena Williams is an immature, spoiled brat, and when she was held to account for her misdeeds on the tennis court she had a tantrum. Does Ms. Williams behavior sound familiar? It should, because it is exactly what our President does on a daily basis.

Ms. William’s imitation of Trump was spot on, as she acted entitled, petulant, petty, vindictive, dishonest, aggressively defensive and disrespectful of the “authority” that admonished her for breaking the rules that everyone is supposed to follow but which she believes do not apply to her. On top of that Serena masterfully played the victim in order to garner sympathy and distract from her failings which is quintessential Trump.

Serena’s behavior on the court and in the interview room afterwards was Trumpian from start to finish, and what was even more telling was that her fans, in the stadium, online and in the media, the overwhelming majority of which despise Trump, all joined in a Trumpian chorus to blindly defend her.

As the equally entitled and obnoxious fans in the stadium booed during the match and trophy ceremony, it was reminiscent of Trump’s rallies where his crowds who Hillary described as a “basket of deplorables” boo the media for “attacking” Trump with “fake news”. And just as Trump spurs on his followers to boo the media for fake news, Serena spurred on her fans to boo Ramos for having attacked her for “fake rules”.

MEDIA MENDACITY

The media response to Serena’s petulant behavior was even worse. I watched ESPN on the following Monday and was astounded that of the six taking heads who chimed in with their hot takes during the network’s plethora of faux argument shows, only one, Frank Isola of the New York Daily News, had the intellectual integrity and testicular fortitude to take Serena to task for her aberrant behavior. The rest all agreed that Serena is the greatest female tennis player of of all-time (some even went so far as to proclaim Serena Williams the greatest athlete of all-time, which is so hysterical as to be absurd. Serena is certainly a great female tennis player, but if she played the top 100 male tennis players in the world, she wouldn’t even win a set, and if she played any of the the top 1,000 male tennis players she still wouldn’t win a match), that sexism and racism was at play in the situation, and that sexism and racism are a major problem in tennis, and to finish it off that even though Serena did violate the coaching rule it is a stupid rule and on and on and on.

In newspaper column after column Serena was hailed by female writers, particularly women of color, who proclaimed that Black women aren’t allowed to get angry in America, and Serena’s treatment at the hands of the official and the U.S. Open was an atrocious display of misogyny and racism. Other writers declared that Black women should follow Serena’s example and embrace their rage and let it out (horrendous advice).

This indulgent approach is what is wrong with America, the media and the #Resistance in particular and it is why we have Trump as president. To celebrate emotional incontinence and outrage for the sake of outrage is so counter-productive, self-defeating and foolish as to be astonishing.

The vast majority of writers and pundits pontificating on the subject have absolutely no knowledge of tennis, but would regurgitate some simple minded phrases they heard, such as, “McEnroe and Connors did much worse back in the day!” Of course, this is true, BUT THAT WAS THIRTY YEARS AGO! And on top of that, McEnroe and Connor’s horrendous behavior is why the rules that were applied to Serena were put in place in the first place in the late 80’s.

The mindless and shallow punditry continued throughout the week and the pro-Serena crowd were the vast majority in the media, at least in America, but certainly not across the globe, as British and particularly Australian writers were much more willing to hold Serena to account. The vapid pro-Serena punditry on ESPN and elsewhere reminded me of the vacuous pro-Trump nonsense that passes for news on Fox News.

The Social Justice Warrior/Identity Politics goosestepping done by the pundit class of the establishment is just as brazenly shameless and devoid of intellectual and moral integrity as anything you’ll see on Trump’s favorite show Fox and Friends.

A VOICE OF REASON - STOP YELLING AT YOUR KIDS!

Thankfully, a true champion and one of the greatest female tennis players of all-time, Martina Navratilova, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times that was the opposite of Serena Williams because it was the epitome of thoughtfulness, integrity and class. Ms. Navratilova was respectful of Serena Williams and said that if women are being treated more harshly than men (which the study the other Times article proves is not true) than that injustice should change, yet proclaimed that Serena’s behavior was unacceptable and dishonored the sport of tennis regardless.

The same week Martina’s op-ed was published the New York Times ran an article that spoke to this issue even though it had nothing to do with sport or Serena Williams titled “ Why You Should Stop Yelling at your Kids”. The gist of the article is this, that yelling at your kids is a sign of weakness, not strength. I think Serena Williams, who is quick to point out she is a mother, and her basket of deplorable fans, should heed that sage advice, because embracing and venting your rage is not a sign of empowerment but of weakness. If you are raising a child and want that child to be successful in life, you will not teach them to display their rage and be ruled by their emotions. People who do those things are terrible people, and if you are teaching your child to behave that way, you are a terrible person too.

BEING SERENA TRUMP

Serena berating an official shows her to be a morally, mentally, emotionally and psychologically weak human being. Serena’s history of acting out when she is losing, such as her previous outbursts at the U.S. Open (in 2009 and 2011 Serena had similar meltdowns) reveals a bully mentality that is incapable of genuine reflection, introspection and taking of responsibility…again…she sounds just like Trump.

Will Martina’s perspective and the release of the study showing Serena is dead wrong about disparity in punishment for male tennis players, change the mind of any of Serena’s fans, or any of the identity politics contingent that came to her defense knowing nothing about the situation or even the sport? No, of course not, because these people are immune to facts and immune to reason, and just like Serena and Trump they only have their hysterical emotions and rage to guide them. Serena is as shameless a liar and manipulator as Trump, and both of them are blessed to have fans who are gullible fools who lap up their bullshit like cold water on a hot Summer’s day.

Because Serena is a woman, and boldly played the sexism card, and because she is Black, and always deftly plays the racism card, the wealthy fans in Flushing Meadows and those in the media, will wave the flag of identity politics as high as they can and refuse to see their own hypocrisy and moronity. These fans and media members excuse Serena’s inexcusable misbehavior simply because of her gender and the color of her skin. These people do not believe in equality, they believe in a separate set of rules…one for them and the people they like, and a harsher one for everyone else.

These same fans and media members think Trump and Trumpers are hateful buffoons, but the reality is that Serena Williams and her entourage of sycophantic media personalities and fans are Trumpian in their cult-like resilience to facts, reason and logic and their addiction to identity above all else. Serena and her fans, like Trump and his supporters, are incapable of understanding objective reality, and instead cling to their subjective experience as the incontrovertible Truth.

Trump may lose the mid-term elections or his re-election campaign or be impeached or resign, but the truth is Trump has already won in the biggest way imaginable, as he has made his enemies into mirror images of himself. Like a scene out of a horrifying remake of Being John Malkovich, everywhere you turn in America there are Trumps acting out in all sorts of selfish and self-gratifying ways. Those filled with fear and loathing of Trump have become the monster they so despise. When Trump is long gone, the Trump infection will live on, in the hearts, minds and actions of those who pretend to be his antithesis.

The Trump virus is spreading and the abysmal display put on by Serena Williams and her acolytes in the media and stands is a stark reminder things are going to get much much worse here in America before they ever get better…and they might never get better.

©2018