From Black Kos editor JoanMar
Keith Olbermann is one of my all-time favorite media personalities. I very rarely disagree with him. I love his passion, I love his righteous indignation, and I love his total disdain for the two-bit conman from Queens. Over the years, his incisive “Special Comments” have moved me to tears more than once. I consider him an honorable and decent man… even despite his many missteps. (Like his recent disclosure that at age 55 he was living with Olivia Nuzzi who would’ve been 16 when he was 50. I mean, his personal business is none of mine, right? Men.)
However, despite his unquestionable loyalty as an ally, Olbermann’s understanding of racial issues will always be filtered through and confined by his own lived experience as a white man and all that entails. He will never ever truly understand what it feels like for Black people to see the league that Black women built being weaponized against them.
I remember the founding mothers of the Women’s National Basketball Association. I remember Cynthia Cooper — the first WNBA player inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame — who was nicknamed the Michael Jordan of women’s basketball. Or should she have been the Stephen Curry of the WNBA? Or maybe just the phenomenal Cynthia Cooper? I remember Sheryl Swoopes, Lisa Leslie, Maya Moore, Tina Thompson, and Chamique Holdsclaw. Caitlin Clarke is very good, but I’ve seen much better.
Women basketball players have always been tough. They are real, honest-to-goodness competitors, and no, they don’t play like the proverbial damsel waiting on Prince Charming to come charging in on his white steed to rescue them. They play rough. Just like their men counterparts. And it was never a problem before this year, and it still wouldn’t be — unless it has to do with The Great White Hope.
Over the years, WNBA players have suffered broken and bloody noses, concussions, poked eyes, knee injuries, cracked ribs, scratches, and lost wigs, all from hard fouls. There have been brawls, pushing and shoving, hard elbows, accompanied with the usual trash-talking, and nobody complained. Christine Brennan, as Olbermann so helpfully pointed out, was around in those days, and she never did interview any of the perpetrators of those aggressive plays because nobody gives a damn if some Black women killed themselves on the basketball court.
A’ja Wilson is the best player in the league and this how she was treated this season:
From dicecitysports.com/...: Michelob Ultra Arena went silent late in the third quarter after Aces superstar Aja Wilson went down with an apparent leg injury after a hard foul in the paint.
Did you notice that the writer didn’t even bother to name the player who fouled her?
From www.wnba.com/...: In her monster 36-point, 12-rebound romp over Dallas—through a bleeding nose, bruised eye, and lost contact lens—Wilson also snatched a career-best six steals in the contest.
Angel Reese, the other leading contender for Rookie of the Year, was clotheslined by Alyssa Thomas causing her to hit the deck hard. It was feared that she might have suffered a concussion. Angel operates around the rim, and she has been elbowed viciously and repeatedly as she fights for her league-leading rebounds. Did we hear a squeak from Christine Brennan?
From the Atlantic Journal:
Tension bubbled early this season as some fans and sports commentators accused veteran WNBA players of feeling jealous of Clark’s stardom and claimed she was being targeted in games. Even though that notion was widely dismissed by players, fouls on Clark quickly became hot topics to debate — with conversations devolving into personal insults or worse.
So, the Women's National Basketball Players Association (WNBAPA) issued a statement rightly highlighting the racism underpinning Christine Brennan’s decision to take a player to task for a foul on Clarke. Those in the know instantly recognized what this journalist was all about. She was trafficking in the prevailing narrative that jealous, bitter Black players were targeting her because she is white. First Brennan asked DiJonai whether her foul was intentional. Know that intentional fouls happen all the time in sports so that’s not even a particularly insightful question. In this case, it wasn’t intentional, but Brennan wasn’t done yet. “Did you and (…) laugh at it afterwards?” Why would a respected journalist like Brennan go there? What was the utility of that question, if not to further cement the idea that racist Black women are going out of their way to dim the Great White Hope’s shine? It’s been reported that Brennan is writing a book about Caitlin Clark supposedly “revolutionizing” the WNBA and that 17 of the 18 articles she’s written so far this season were about CC. Chrystal clear what her agenda was in doing that interview. If I’m wrong about her, Jake Tapper and Olbermann, show me the articles she’s written or the questions she has asked about the injuries sustained by A’ja, Angel, and countless others during this season. Waiting...
Back to Keith Olbermann. His “Worst Persons In The World” segment has always been my favorite part of his shows. On 10/01/2024, his third worst person award was reserved for the WNBAPA for having the audacity to criticize Brennan, who, in his words, “deserves to be on the Mount Rushmore of women’s sports.” It was very telling to me that Keith didn’t just disagree with the union statement or praise Brennan for her contribution to sports and sports journalism; no, he went much, much further. They must be punished! He called for the boycott of the league until the union apologizes to the sainted lady. Showing his total lack of awareness about this issue, he used some of the harshest words of his podcast to describe members of the players’ union: jerks, idiots, morons, bullies. The head of the union must resign or be fired, he declared. All media houses must boycott the WNBA. He likened the head of the union and its members to the racist, amoral Orange Plague. Black women fighting for their members and their professional integrity likened to donaldfuckingtrump.
A reminder that Keith had waded into women’s basketball before, notably to excoriate Angel Reese for having the temerity to taunt Caitlin Clark, something athletes, including Clarke herself, have done for ages. Olbermann, of all people, must know this, yet he decided to label Angel then as “classless.” In that instance, the backlash was swift and fierce forcing him to issue an apology.
Keith Olbermann, once again tripping over his own feet in his haste to gallop to the rescue of white damsels in non-distress. In the process, completely disregarding the very real threats and danger facing Black women players from haters who have been waging a war against them on social media, in the stands, and in real life. He was outraged at the perceived slight against white women — Brennan & Clark — while framing Black players and their union representatives as the scary villains. Just another day in the history of a country that sanctifies and protect white women above all else.
It’s about the day-in day-out fatigue of having to explain the obvious to the clueless…. It’s about having to overlook blue failings and white failings so that they can be conveniently viewed as black issues.
Bryant Gumbel.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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The day after two young Black Tennessee state lawmakers were expelled last year by majority white male Republicans, Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Nashville on a whim to condemn the ousters in a non-scripted fiery speech.
It was a remarkable move for a sitting vice president to engage in such state-level controversy.
Reps. Justin J. Pearson, Justin Jones and Gloria Johnson were brought up on expulsion charges in the state House of Representatives after joining anti-gun violence protesters in the state Capitol building following a deadly school shooting that took the lives of three 9-year-old students and three faculty members.
Ultimately, Pearson and Jones — newly elected 20-something lawmakers at the time — were expelled. Johnson, a white woman, survived the vote to retain her seat. Pearson and Jones were later reinstated in their respective special elections.
“The vice president coming to Tennessee on April 7, 2023, was one of the most pivotal moments in our fight for justice in Tennessee in decades,” said Rep. Pearson, reflecting on Harris’ impromptu visit to Fisk University.
The vice presidential visit was a show of national solidarity for not just Pearson and Jones but also the broader multiracial coalition of anti-gun violence and pro-social justice young voters throughout the state.
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A Mississippi town is attracting national attention after the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) investigation just uncovered a historic level of police corruption. And to no one’s surprise, the victims are— you guessed it— mostly the city’s Black residents.
The city of Lexington, Miss. only holds about 1400 people, 76 percent of which are Black, according to the World Population Review. Despite being a small city and having one of the poorest economies in the state, the DOJ’s report found Lexington’s police department continues to disproportionately benefit from excessive fines, which is also known as “policing for profit”.
From 2021 to 2023, Lexington increased police spending from $662,925 to $965,130, according to the report. To collect this money, it’s reported the Lexington Police Department (LPD) has arrested about a fourth of the city’s population since 2021 and collected fines totaling more than $1.7 million. When you break it all down, that would mean every Lexington resident— man, woman, and child— owes $1,400 to the LPD.
But oh, it gets worse. According to the DOJ, “Through a combination of poor leadership, retaliation, and a complete lack of internal accountability, LPD has created a system where officers can relentlessly violate the law.”
The report listed examples of the LPD’s civil rights violations against its own citizens including sexual harassment against women, racial discrimination against Black residents, and even unjust sentencing for residents who fail to pay their fines.
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The UK has agreed to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, ending years of bitter dispute over Britain’s last African colony.
The agreement will allow a right of return for Chagossians, who the UK expelled from their homes in the 1960s and 1970s, in what has been described as a crime against humanity and one of the most shameful episodes of postwar colonialism.
However, there will be an exception for the key island of Diego Garcia, which is home to a joint UK-US military base, and which will remain under UK control. Plans for the base were the reason the UK severed the Chagos Islands from the rest of Mauritius when it granted the latter independence in 1968 and forcibly displaced up to 2,000 people.
There was a mixed reaction to the announcement from Chagossians, not all of whom are happy that sovereignty has been handed to Mauritius.
But Olivier Bancoult, chair of the Chagos Refugee Group, who was four years old when his family was deported to Mauritius, welcomed it, describing it as “a big day”.
“This has been a long struggle lasting more than 40 years and many of our people have passed away,” said Bancoult, who had mounted a series of legal challenges over the sovereignty of the islands in the UK courts since 2000. “But today is a sign of recognition of the injustice done against Chagossians who were forced to leave their homes.”
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