Well there is a lot to say today. Lot of scattered thoughts. I’m gonna say ‘em. I’m gonna say so many things.
1. You can tell who’s cool and who isn’t cool in college basketball media by how they treat Mike Krzyzewski.
Looking at you, Seth Davis, you fawning clown.
(The proper reaction is to make jokes—the worst reaction is to fawn, the medium reaction is to say terrible things about him.)
2. The Naomi Osaka thing brought out some hypocrites.
If you missed it, Naomi Osaka, a young, Black tennis star, refused to speak to the media at the French Open this week, something that led to a blowup from the French Open, which in turn led to Osaka responding thusly (you have to click into the tweet to read her statement):
This seems like a reasonable thing for someone who wants to protect their mental health to do. Could some say mistakes were made? Of course. There are discussions about the best way to avoid this blowing up. Are there some folks out there who are annoyed by how far some people take “self-care?” Sure. At times, I’m one of those people, specifically when, say, a subset of Instagram bloggers turn it into, “Treat other people poorly because you’ve gotta practice self-care, sweetheart.” But the overarching thing that happened here was that a 23-year-old star decided to protect her health, something that, had it happened in Hollywood or Nashville, would probably have elicited a different response from many.
To be fair, a lot of people are supporting Osaka in this instance. People are often reasonable. But there have been some gems of unreason, and here are my two favorites:
The first is the group that’s saying, “She’s paid to play a game!” This is silly. Why does talking to the press have anything to do with her source of income? And if it does, why can’t she just forgo that piece of it by being less of a public figure and more simply an athlete? That would actually be being paid to play a game. What these people are arguing for is that she be paid to talk to the media. And in some sweet irony, many of them come from the same crowd that is intensely distrusting of the media.
The second is the group that believes it to be the greatest of sins to speak ill of any journalist, or to slight a journalist or the journalism profession in any way, but is now twisting itself in knots to say, “Well in this case…” because they know they’re supposed to support Naomi Osaka. Journalism, of course, is hugely important to a free society. But sports journalism? Not the most important kind of journalism. I love most of the Cubs beat writers, but if I had to find out on the transactions page of the Cubs’ website when Jake Marisnick starts his rehab assignment instead of getting it through a tweet, I could handle it. Anyway, a lot of the people who legitimately think speaking to the media is the most important thing athletes do and aren’t just adopting that stance because they hate whenever any athlete does anything unconventional (those people are in the first group) are doing this twisting, and it, too, is silly, because their original stance is silly.
Let athletes talk to the media if they want to talk to the media. Many enjoy it. None should be required. Being paid to play a game is different from being paid to talk to reporters so stop saying the dumb thing you are saying.
3. Is Fargo sleeping right next to me now because I got mad at her earlier and she wants to remind me how much I love her?
Our puppy, Fargo, did a very puppy thing earlier and spilled a mug of tea all over the table. She was trying to steal my book of passwords, presumably because she wanted to wire money to Petco in exchange for a dump truck full of peanut butter and chicken-based imitation rawhide. The tea mercifully missed my computer, but it did soak my planner, which I use as sort of a mental comforter to tell myself I’m not forgetting to do anything essential. I was mad. I yelled at Fargo. Fargo was unmoved. She did not seem to understand she was responsible for my yelling. She excitedly played with the carboard tube in the center of the paper towel roll after I spiked it on the floor in rage as I tried to corral the tea before it made it to even more important papers on the table, like this business’s checkbook. Life was fine in Fargo-world.
Now, Fargo’s sleeping directly next to me, something she doesn’t always do. Right next to my right foot. Being really cute.
Which makes me think:
I was told once that dogs evolved to make people love them. This makes sense. People keep dogs alive. I keep Fargo alive by taking her to the Vet ER in the middle of the night when she starts vomiting bile (only happened once) and prying mildly poisonous things out of her mouth when she tries to swallow them (this happens frequently) and digging up the rotting wood in this duplex’s backyard and pouring vinegar into the whole left behind when mushrooms sprout out of that rotting wood because it’s evidently impossible for a layperson to identify mushrooms and all should be assumed to be deadly to the canine race and Fargo, left to her own devices, will have herself a possibly-deadly fungal feast (this happens almost every day).
So I’m wondering, as Fargo stretches her paws and her head and tries to sleep through the man weedwhacking our front yard (unclear if the man was hired by our landlords or is just a neighbor who’s sick of looking at the yard our landlords aren’t fulfilling their contractual obligation to keep mowed), whether Fargo knows I was mad at her and wants to get back on my good side, or whether she’s worried about me because I was upset and wants to make sure I’m ok so I can continue to give her food and sprinkle the little probiotic on it to help her not shit liquid from the pecans and the mushrooms and probably the underdevelopment of her colon from those two diseases we found out she had when we took her to the Vet ER in the middle of the night.
Or maybe she just happened to roll this way in her dreams. Who knows.
