How can you spot a racist? It's pretty easy to do, especially in the Protection Racket Media. Just look for those who bring race into arguments as non-sequiturs in order to demagogue people whose opinions fall outside the elites' comfort zone.
Thus we come to Howard Bryant and the Guardian. Indiana Fever star Sophie Cunningham has become one of the WNBA's most outspoken players, mainly to criticize the league for allowing her teammate Caitlin Clarke to get mauled game after game with almost no consequences. However, last month reporters decided to ask Cunningham about the issue of biological males encroaching on female spaces and sports, and Cunningham made it clear she opposed the practice. Cunningham then repeated her position when asked about it again.
That makes Cunningham a raaaaaacist, at least according to the standards of the Guardian. Let's step through the argument:
Conservatives once demanded sports stay apolitical.
And how did that work out? At the Guardian, especially?
Now they’ve embraced a new culture-war politics, and Sophie Cunningham has become one of its most valuable stars
Invoking a wounded innocence that their desire for sports to be simple, just like they used to be, conservatives for a decade and a half have dreaded the word “politics”. Now they cannot get enough.
Well, we still prefer sports to be simple. Having separate sports for biological males and females is simplicity itself. It acknowledges the physiological differences between the two sexes and allows for fair competition, especially among women. That's so simple that we spent a century recognizing its inherent truth, at least until the idiots at the Guardian and elsewhere began to pretend that males could change themselves into females.
As for "not getting enough," this is the Left's dodge on transgender sports issues. Conservatives didn't start this fight; males encroaching on female spaces started this fight. It continues because the Left insists on fighting this battle despite both actual science and the results demonstrating the unfairness of such competition in sports. And it is well worth noting that Cunningham didn't actually set out to get into this debate, but rather was drawn into it by sports reporters who wanted to pick this fight with her.
Because she responded to the question, Bryant crowns her as an "anti-Black" activist:
Philadelphia Eagles defensive coordinator Vic Fangio has spent 40 years in the National Football League unknown except for his defensive schemes, but last week opened his press remarks mocking the congressional testimony of Dr Anthony Fauci, jokingly invoking the Fifth Amendment before taking questions. Apropos of nothing, President Trump publicly surmised that LeBron James might be a racist. Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham is now in the act, accepting the role as the right’s anti-Black, anti-transgender culture war ambassador, the role originally intended for Caitlin Clark.
What on earth does the debate over transgender competion have to do with being "anti-Black"? Answer? Nothing, except in Bryant's racially-addled mind.
And how was Clark "Intended" for the role of an "anti-Black" ambassador? By whom, exactly? Clark came into the WNBA as perhaps the most gifted athlete in the league, who just wants to play on an even court, so to speak. Instead, the league has turned a blind eye to muggings she receives on court, and Cunningham is understandably angry about it. Rather than address those concerns, "journalists" like Bryant want to make it about race, a narrative that reached its nadir with USA Today columnist Nancy Armour's suggestion that Clark should consider it as reparations for racial injustices.
The only racists we see here work in the media.
Bryant then continues:
If Clark has lacked the courage and dexterity to say anything beyond the milky and ambiguous, Sophie Cunningham does not suffer from such internal conflicts. Largely anonymous politically or otherwise during her eight-year career, Cunningham – she of the viral finger-point which has been adopted as a symbol of the white animosity toward the WNBA culture – is in her moment. Her comments in a lengthy 21 July ESPN profile stating her opposition to transgender athletes has earned her hero status of the specious “Protect Our Girls” movement, even though you’d need a microscope to find any critical mass of transgender women participating in sports at any level.
No, you don't need a microscope. You just need a camera pointed at the medal stand after such competitions. That's how "Lia" Thomas transformed from a mediocre competitor in men's swimming to winning every record in women's swimming. Even without the medals, however, the damage from this practice is calculated in women excluded from their own competitions, squeezed out by males who replace them to compete against other women. Just because the trend has been numerically small – but hardly "microscopic" – does not mean that the damage has been minimal. Women have been seriously injured when forced to compete against males in kinetic sports competitions, most spectacularly at the recent Olympics when the IOC allowed a male to compete in women's boxing.
Bryant then insinuates that Cunningham is a bimbo who chose to become a political activist:
Cunningham plays role of the blithe and bubbly iconoclast, oblivious to the world around as she unapologetically speaks her truths, but she is every bit as political as Colin Kaepernick, Megan Rapinoe, or her locked-armed, T-shirt wearing colleagues that defined the WNBA when she first entered the league in 2019. Cunningham forged a tough, take-no-prisoners-without-taking-herself-too-seriously persona, but was too meek to address the toxic roots of her newfound fame.
Is it "toxic" to be tough in sports? Bryant wants it both ways. He all but calls Clark a wimp for not having the "courage and dexterity to say anything beyond the milky and ambiguous," and then suggests Cunningham should shut up rather than defend herself. This appears to be the sports media's version of the Madonna-Whore Complex, with a large splash of performative race obsession added into the psychosis.
Perhaps the best way to understand sports media, and the Protection Racket Media in general, is as an asylum for the insanely aggrieved.
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