Remember the WNBA? The women’s basketball league the NBA started to draw more women into watching basketball? In its inaugural season, the WNBA finals drew 2.85 million viewers, when the Houston Comets won the first of their four championships.
It’s never reached those heights again, and the Comets folded in 2008. There was a mild uptick to 728,000 viewers last year.
So you’d think the league would welcome an exciting, highly skilled new breakout player.
You’d be wrong.
“For almost three decades the WNBA has been a laughing stock and disgrace of a professional sports league that only survives due to NBA subsidies.”
“A possible turning point for this sad existence of a league has arrived in the form of a basketball messiah.”
“Caitlin Clark, the greatest and most popular female college basketball player of all time, has announced she’ll be joining the WNBA this upcoming season, and some think she can do for the WNBA what Larry, Magic or Jordan did for the NBA.” I think she can make it more popular, but I sincerely doubt she can produce the same boost that trio gave to the NBA’s fortunes.
“The WNBA’s players don’t want Caitlin Clark to succeed.”
“The WNBA is made up primarily of players who’ve been infected with the false ideas of modern feminism, which heavily focuses on issues related to race, sexuality, gender identity and participating in the oppression Olympics.” I would say “Get woke, go broke,” but the WNBA was already broke without NBA subsidies.
“The players that have been infected with this ideology don’t want Clark to be the face of the league and will do everything in their power to stop it from happening.”
“The first problem Clark will face is that she will be a straight player in a primarily LGBT dominated league, which some of you may think is nonsense and won’t have any effect.”
“But don’t take it from me, take it from former WNBA champion and number three overall draft pick Candace Wiggins, who claimed that 98% of the league is gay and that the toxic environment within the the league affected her as a straight woman and made her retire early.”
“From her first moment in the league, she was targeted and harassed because she was straight and a nationally popular figure, and that many of the other players were jealous and consistently tried to hurt her.”
“After Wiggins came out with these comments, the media didn’t support her. Instead they tried to tear down and diminish her.”
“If you look at viewership numbers since the start of the league, you’ll see viewership is still down tremendously. But the league and the media will still try to create a positive narrative by saying things like how this year’s finals had the highest viewership for a game three in 18 years, without mentioning it was still over 200,000 viewers short of the game three 18 years ago, and one of the teams that played in that game [doesn’t] even exist anymore.”
“Even worse for Caitlin Clark is that, unlike Wiggins, in the minds of those who participate in the oppression Olympics, Clark bears the ultimate sin of being white.”
“We’ve already seen this be a problem for other WNBA Stars. For example Sabrina Ionescu. She’s of course the player who took Steph Curry to the wire in the Three-Point Contest, which was probably the most exciting thing of that dumpster fire of an All-Star weekend.”
“Like Clark, Sabrina was a dominant college player who won awards and consistently pulled in higher attendance numbers for her college game than the average WNBA game, yet ever since she’s been in the league she’s faced criticism from players and the media because she’s white.”
“With an Emmy-nominated sportscaster [Chris Williamson] straight up saying the reason people aren’t rocking with Sabrina is because she leans into her white privilege and benefits from her whiteness and doesn’t use it to uplift and amplify her black co-workers voices in the WNBA.”
Plus the usual accusations of racism for putting her on the NBA2K24 cover. (Which is, I think, a special WNBA edition available only at Gamestop? I don’t play sports video games, so I have no idea how these various editions work.)
“This past year, Sabrina was ranked six by the fans and media among guards for All-Star voting, but was ranked 19th by the players.”
“Articles have already started to emerge which claim Clark’s whiteness is the reason she has been elevated to superstar status instead of, you know, the fact that she’s actually a legit college superstar who’s scoring points at a level not seen since Pistol Pete and bringing in more fans to the women’s game than ever before.” This is hyperbole. Though quite impressive, Clark’s 27.8 points per game in NCAA Division 1 doesn’t come close to Pete Maravich’s insane 44.5 points per game, and Chris Clemons averaged 30 points a game 2018-19.
“Those in and around the league subscribe to beliefs that simply don’t allow them to build the WNBA around Caitlin Clark, but rather instead actually urge them to tear her down.”
Is the commenter (TooLazyToHoop) overselling Clark? Maybe. I’m hardly an expert on the WNBA or women’s college basketball. (Although, since I could, in fact, name five past WNBA players with a gun to my head, I probably do know more than 99% of the American public.) But the video shows Clark does have a very sweet 3-point stroke.
And now Bill Burr’s quite relevant WNBA rant:
“Nobody in the WNBA got Covid.”
“We gave you a fucking league! None of you showed up! Where are all the feminists? None of you went to the fucking games. You failed them, not me.”
“Women failed the WNBA.”
“Meanwhile, the Kardashians are making billions. Those Real Housewives shows are making money hand over fist. That’s what women are watching.”
Happy New Year, everyone! The Biden Recession bites deeper, Israel dirtnaps a top terrorist, Harvard’s chief plagiarist finally steps down, and the crypto CEO who wasn’t there. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
The monthly nonfarm payrolls (from the Establishment Survey) may have been weak at 216K but the far more accurate Household Survey showed that the number of Employed workers actually collapsed by an unprecedented 683K, the biggest drop since the US economy was shutdown by covid!
Even scarier, while the monthly grind higher in the payrolls number (pulled from the far less accurate Establishment Survey) means that US jobs hit a record high every month with bizarre consistency and in December this was certainly the case, the total nonfarm employment number rose to an all time high 157.232 million, the abovementioned collapse in US Employment (per Household survey) meant that there were only 161.183 million employed people in the US, the lowest since June, with the now traditional divergence between these two surveys glaringly obvious.
A senior Hamas leader was killed Tuesday in a drone strike in Beirut, Lebanon, during a meeting between Palestinian factions at a Hamas office.
Saleh al-Arouri, deputy chairman of Hamas’s political bureau and commander of the terror group’s military wing in the West Bank, and at least five others died from the explosion, which occurred near Hezbollah’s headquarters in Beirut, Lebanese state media reported. Several more were injured. Following the blast, Hamas blamed Israel for the “Zionist raid” amid its ongoing war with the Jewish state. Israel has not claimed responsibility for the strike.
Many Israeli officials declined to comment. However, Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich posted a statement on X shortly after the attack: “Surely your enemies will perish, O Israel.”
In November, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicated he ordered the nation’s Mossad spy agency to eliminate Hamas leaders around the world after the militant group’s coordinated October 7 attack. Netanyahu’s office also declined to comment about the explosion.
Al-Arouri, whom Hamas described as “one of the architects” of the terror attack on Israel, had close ties with Yahwa Sinwar, the group’s leader in Gaza. Al-Arouri is the most senior Hamas leader to have been killed since the war began in early October.
A good chunk of the Epstein files have finally been released. Some revelations: Bill Clinton “likes them young” and Donald Trump didn’t have sex with at least one girl who was asked under oath about it.
Harvard President Claudine Gay finally does the right thing and resigns in wake of burgeoning plagiarism scandal.
A three act farce: Act 1: “Ohio governor Mike DeWine (R.) on Friday vetoed a bill that would have banned both transgender procedures for minors and trans student-athlete participation in school sports in the state.” Act 2: Turns out DeWine has taken taken over $40,000 in donations from pro-child-genital-mutilation hospitals. Act 3: “Republican Ohio governor Mike DeWine issued an “emergency” executive order Friday banning child gender-transition surgeries after receiving intense backlash last week for vetoing a bill with a broader but similar mandate.” Ohio’s Republican legislature can and should override DeWine’s foolish veto.
Robert F. Kennedy, jr. qualifies for the presidential ballot in Utah.
Last month, American Values 2024, a super PAC supporting the third-party candidate, announced a plan to spend nearly $15 million to get Kennedy on the ballot in ten states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, New York and Texas. All are important to winning the 2024 race.
I don’t see RFK Jr. doing even as well in Utah as Egg McMuffin did in 2016, and of the other states, only Arizona, Colorado, Michigan and Nevada might have any effect on the election, all four of which went (however fraudulently) for Biden in 2020.
Ricky Gervais has a great idea: He and Dave Chappelle should co-host the Oscars. That would indeed be a smash ratings success, and I would watch the Oscars for the first time this century.
This is the only way for us to live in peace,” said Texas Governor Greg Abbot. “The citizens of Austin have been at war with the people of Texas for many years now, and to end the bloodshed for future generations, we are willing to recognize Austin as its own separate and sovereign land.”
The resolution brought much-needed relief to the war-torn area, where battle lines had been drawn along the border of Austin. “The weirdo hipsters of Austin can stand down now,” said Texas Senator Ted Cruz in a statement acknowledging the resolution. “The people of Austin can now stop patrolling the perimeter of the city in armored tanks and go back to driving electric vehicles, painting strange murals nobody understands, and hating everything the United States stands for.”
It’s no coincidence that the most vocal outcry against President Trump’s measures have come from urban elites and the corporations that cater to them. It’s easy to spot the class divides in the scoffing at Andrew Puzder, CEO of the company behind Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, getting a cabinet position instead of Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg who had been tipped for Treasury Secretary by Hillary.
Carl’s Jr and its 4 Dollar Real Deal are a world away from Facebook’s Gehry designed Menlo Park headquarters. Or as a WWE tournament is from Conde Nast’s Manhattan skyscraper.
It’s hard to imagine a clearer contrast between coastal elites and the heartland, and between the new economy and the old. On the one side are the glittering cities where workforces of minorities and immigrants do the dirty work behind the slick logos and buzzwords of the new economy. On the other are Rust Belt communities and Southern towns who actually used to make things.
Facebook’s top tier geniuses enjoy the services of an executive chef, treadmill workstations and a bike repair shop walled off from East Palo Alto’s Latino population and the crime and gang violence. And who works in Facebook’s 11 restaurants or actually repairs the bikes in the back room? Or looks through the millions of pictures posted on timelines to screen out spam, pornography and racism?
Behind the illusion of a shiny new future are Mexicans getting paid a few dollars an hour to decide if that Italian Renaissance painting you just shared violates Facebook’s content guidelines.
If you live in the world of Facebook, Lyft, Netflix and Airbnb, crowding into airports shouting, “No Borders, No Nations, Stop The Deportations” makes sense. You don’t live in a country. You live in one of a number of interchangeable megacities or their bedroom communities. Patriotism is a foreign concept. You have no more attachment to America than you do to Friendster or MySpace. The nation state is an outdated system of social organization that is being replaced by more efficient systems of global governance. The only reason anyone would cling to nations or borders is racism.
The demographic most opposed to President Trump is not a racial minority, but a cultural elite.
This isn’t a revolution. The revolutions happened in June in the UK and in November in the US. Brexit and Trump were revolutions. The protests against them are a reaction.
In the midst of freaking out, Instapundit notes that our elites are displaying why they’re unfit to rule:
Why all the anger over Trump?
As I’ve pondered this, I’ve gone back to Tyler Cowen’s statement: “Occasionally the real force behind a political ideology is the subconsciously held desire that a certain group of people should not be allowed to rise in relative status.”
I think that a lot of the elite hatred for Trump, and for his supporters, stems from just such a sentiment. For decades now, the educated meritocrats who ran America — the “Best and the Brightest,” in David Halberstam’s not-actually-complimentary term — have enjoyed tremendous status, regardless of election results.
An election’s turn might see some moving to the private sector — say as K street lobbyists or high-priced lawyers or consultants — while a different batch of meritocrats take their positions in government. But even so, their status remained unchallenged: They were always the insiders, the elite, the winners, regardless of which team came out ahead in the elections.
But as Nicholas Ebserstadt notes, that changed in November. To the privileged and well-educated Americans living in their “bicoastal bastions,” things seemed to be going quite well, even as the rest of the country fell farther and farther behind. But, writes Eberstadt: “It turns out that the year 2000 marks a grim historical milestone of sorts for our nation. For whatever reasons, the Great American Escalator, which had lifted successive generations of Americans to ever higher standards of living and levels of social well-being, broke down around then — and broke down very badly.
“The warning lights have been flashing, and the klaxons sounding, for more than a decade and a half. But our pundits and prognosticators and professors and policymakers, ensconced as they generally are deep within the bubble, were for the most part too distant from the distress of the general population to see or hear it.”
Well, now they’ve heard it, and they’ve also heard that a lot of Americans resent the meritocrats’ insulation from what’s happening elsewhere, especially as America’s unfortunate record over the past couple of decades, whether in economics, in politics, or in foreign policy, doesn’t suggest that the “meritocracy” is overflowing with, you know, actual merit.
In the United States, the result has been Trump. In Britain, the result was Brexit. In both cases, the allegedly elite — who are supposed to be cool, considered, and above the vulgar passions of the masses — went more or less crazy. From conspiracy theories (it was the Russians!) to bizarre escape fantasies (A Brexit vote redo! A military coup to oust Trump!) the cognitive elite suddenly didn’t seem especially elite, or for that matter particularly cognitive.
In fact, while America was losing wars abroad and jobs at home, elites seemed focused on things that were, well, faintly ridiculous. As Richard Fernandez tweeted: “The elites lost their mojo by becoming absurd. It happened on the road between cultural appropriation and transgender bathrooms.” It was fatal: “People believe from instinct. The Roman gods became ridiculous when the Roman emperors did. PC is the equivalent of Caligula’s horse.”
You have to read this Glenn Greenwald piece on what’s wrong with the Democratic Party. “The more alarmed one is by the Trump administration, the more one should focus on how to fix the systemic, fundamental sickness of the Democratic Party. That Hillary Clinton won the meaningless popular vote on her way to losing to Donald Trump, and that the singular charisma of Barack Obama kept him popular, have enabled many to ignore just how broken and failed the Democrats are as a national political force.” Never mind that Greenwald ignores one of the big elephants in the room (the Social Justice Warrior/victimhood identity politics brigade doing such a bang-up job alienating American voters). His description of the other elephant in the room, the party’s fundamentally corrupt and anti-Democratic nature, is fairly acute.
All the Trump Derangement is masking the Democratic Party’s own civil war. “There is no Barack Obama among the ranks of current Democrats. He simply does not exist. That truth, and Hillary’s defeat, means the years ahead will be ones of rebuilding and rebranding. So far, it’s not going well.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Seven days in February. “Why were former Obama-administration appointees or careerist officials tapping the phone calls of an incoming Trump designate and then leaking the tapes to their pets in the press?” Also this: “The Democratic party has been absorbed by its left wing and is beginning to resemble the impotent British Labour party. Certainly it no longer is a national party.”
“The Social Security Administration paid $1 billion in benefits to individuals who did not have a Social Security Number.”
“This is what Chuck Todd and others like him fail to accept or comprehend: The mainstream media have delegitimized themselves. Republicans and independents watched for eight long years as Todd and others of his ilk did their best to help and support the last administration; not only refusing to hold President Obama to account (the way they are imploring each other to do with Trump) but providing cover for him.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Turns out that patiently explaining to the deplorable redneck freaks of JesusLand why they’re ignorant rubes that need to be ruled for their own good doesn’t win votes.
Marine Le Pen is winning over French women. In addition to refusing to wear a headscarf, “Le Pen again vowed to protect French women after the mass sexual assault by groups of men in Cologne, Germany, just over a year ago in an op-ed that tied together immigration and women rights.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Cahnman’s Musings has a roundup of what various school district Superintendents make. It’s an interesting list, though I personally would not have broken it up by Texas House committee chairman. I’m not surprised that they average a low six figures, or that the Superintendents of Houston and Dallas ISD make in excess of $300,000. Why I don’t understand is why the Superintendent for Galena Park ISD, a working class school district with 22,549 students and a single 4A high school, makes $270,531, or 90% of the what the HISD Superintendent makes…
Feminist derangement syndrome: “I was walking into a gas station for a bottle of water when the man behind me stepped up to open the door for me. With that act of kindness, something inside me snapped and I flew into a blind rage. I began screaming at him at the top of my lungs.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
“I would say 98 percent of the women in the WNBA are gay women” says ex-WNBA player Candice Wiggins, who says she was bullied and harassed for being straight. This is not exactly a surprise, thought that 98% number may be slightly high. I casually followed the WNBA back when the Houston Comets were dominating the league, but haven’t paid attention since they folded. Today half of the teams still lose money. But I’m sure their popularity will skyrocket any day now…
