Criticizing Taylor Swift And Her Fellow Girlbosses Rouses The Fragile Feminist Ego
Males holding female celebrities to equal standards isn't misogynist.Males holding female celebrities to equal standards isn't misogynist.Couch: Add tennis star Naomi Osaka to Nike’s body count
Nike used to sell shoes. Phil Knight sold them out of his car at track meets. The Swoosh was a side brand, growing because it was attached to successful athletes.
Now, it's bigger than the athletes themselves. In fact, today Nike creates the athletes to feed the Swoosh.
It created Tiger Woods and made him into a black golfer, which he was never comfortable with. It built the Nike brand on him, as Michael Jordan's career finished up. Then it spit Tiger out. His career is probably over. With its massive $42 billion in annual revenues, Nike created LeBron James as a social justice warrior. And the biggest name in basketball is too afraid to say a negative word about the Swoosh's socially unjust connection to China.
We see its latest work: Nike created the future of women's tennis, Naomi Osaka, and then spit her out and left her career in ruins. She was built into a black, Asian social justice warrior. A trifecta! She should be coasting this week to another U.S. Open championship.
Instead, we might never see her on a tennis court again.
"I feel like for me, recently, like when I win, I don't feel happy," she said Friday, after an early-round loss to the 74th-ranked player in the world at the U.S. Open. "I feel like a relief. And then when I lose, I feel very sad. I don't think that's normal."
She started to cry and then said she was "trying to figure out what I want to do. I honestly don't know when I'm going to play my next tennis match."
No problem. Nike, and all of Osaka's other endorsers, already got theirs. It wasn't just Nike; Osaka got $50 million in endorsements, the most of any female athlete in the world. As a Japanese-American, she had been primed as the face of the Tokyo Olympics.
In 2018, she beat Serena Williams in the U.S. Open final and was known as the sweet young newcomer. Three years later, at the same tournament, she left after throwing her racquet, hitting balls into the stands, and crying.
Her career is in ruins.
Why am I putting this on the Swoosh? Because Osaka's crash and fall this year is just so reminiscent of Nike's playbook.
Earlier this year, in the two-part HBO documentary "Tiger," we got a look at how the Swoosh played a role in Tiger Woods' colossal rise and calamitous fall. In Woods' case, it was about how Nike forced Tiger into a role he was uncomfortable with, as the societal hero and black golfer.
Woods signed with Nike as a 20-year-old in 1996. In "Tiger," Jim Riswold, advertising director for Nike, said that he brought up the discussion with Nike, "Do we want to play the race card?" Nike's not stupid financially. Using Tiger to reach a wider range of golfers and expand the golf universe is a no-brainer. They said, "F---in' yeah. Let's do this."
Nike started a campaign about how some golf clubs still would not allow Woods to play at them.
This was not a role Woods was prepared for. He went on the Oprah show and said he was frustrated when people portrayed him as black. He had invented a word for himself when he was a kid: He is a Cablinasian, a mix of Caucasian, black, Indian, and Asian.
I remember the outcry of that well. I was in the middle of it. Oprah's people had invited me to that show, and when he said that, my story the next day in the Chicago Sun-Times was on the front page and picked up by Howard Stern, Dan Rather, and several other national media outlets. The show had been taped and wouldn't be seen until later in the week.
Oprah's people called that morning to say she was furious with me for turning his appearance into a racial thing. A few days later, the show got such good ratings that the same handlers called back and offered me free tickets to the show any time for me and my family.
Turning Woods into something he wasn't and keeping him under constant spotlight played a big role in his personal collapse.
"In reality, at that point in time, being Tiger Woods had taken its toll on Tiger Woods," Steve Williams, Woods' former caddie, said in the documentary.
With Osaka, her "handlers are her greatest enemy. They have her going in all different directions that she is not prepared for: social justice queen, face of the Olympics, documentary subject, swimsuit model. Did I forget one?
"Oh yeah, tennis champion."
In 2019, a few months after Osaka beat Williams, she won the Australian Open and reached No. 1. She should have been on a high. Instead, she fired her coach, saying she wasn't willing to "put success over happiness."
In 2020, Osaka showed up at the U.S. Open pushing the black-tennis-player angle. She wore a different custom Nike COVID mask each day with the name of a black person killed, including Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.
This year, at 22, she was an endorsement queen, fully built for the Olympics.
Today's athletes' greatest relationships are with their marketers, often Nike. They are not with their coaches. Osaka's focus was no longer to become a better player but instead to do what her agents at IMG wanted, to do what Nike wanted.
They take a young, immature athlete without a fully formed worldview and create a brand beyond their depth. They are actually taking away the athlete's true voice and replacing it with a financially beneficial one. Then, they shine as much spotlight as possible.
Sometimes the athlete melts. That happened at this year's French Open, where Osaka said she wasn't going to talk to the media, then withdrew from the tournament under the backlash. She started talking about her mental health. She then dropped out of Wimbledon.
She lit the torch at the Olympics, lost early, cried in Cincinnati, and threw her racquet at the U.S. Open and cried again.
Osaka has to go away now to find who she really is and see if there is happiness there. Oh well, the Swoosh was fed.Couch: Naomi Osaka is no Muhammad Ali. She can’t float like a butterfly, and she’s being drowned by her enemies
Naomi Osaka has identified the wrong enemy. She has partnered with and cozied up to hers without knowing it. Meanwhile, her abuser has convinced Osaka to blame an innocent bystander.
If you want to know what's wrong with the most talented female tennis player in the word, I think that's it. Her mind is being manipulated by an abuser she mistakes for her lover.
At Osaka's news conference this week before a tennis tournament near Cincinnati, a reporter from the Cincinnati Enquirer asked her a simple, non-challenging question about her relationship with the media. She has, after all, withdrawn from one major and dropped out of another this year to avoid press conferences. After answering the question, she broke into tears.
Darn media at it again? No. A few minutes later, her real enemy bared fangs. Her agent, Stuart Duguid of IMG, tweeted this:
"The bully at the Cincinnati Enquirer is the epitome of why player/media relations are so fraught right now. Everyone on that Zoom (conference call) will agree that his tone was all wrong and his sole purpose was to intimidate. Really appalling behavior."
Don't fall for it, Naomi. You don't need a man to defend you. You can be a strong woman. Deep down, you know there was no bullying, no intimidation, no tone. Don't you?
Osaka's handlers are her greatest enemy. They have her going in all different directions that she is not prepared for: social justice queen, face of the Olympics, documentary subject, swimsuit model. Did I forget one?
Oh yeah: tennis champion.
When she starts to crack up? Tell her it's the media's fault. Tell her that she'll feel better when she can get away from them and spend more time on the next self-glorifying project her handlers arrange, profit from, and use to recruit a new athletic pawn in need of manipulation, oops, management.
This is the game being run on modern athletes. Their primary relationship is no longer with a coach, someone motivated to improve their on-court performance. Their most important relationship is now with a marketer, someone motivated to monetize an athlete's immature and malleable worldview and brand. Athletes are pushed beyond their depth. It's no wonder Osaka is drowning. She's surrounded by sharks.
Including the compliant social justice mobsters in the media, who have partnered with her marketers to drag her into the deepest intellectual waters. It's all part of a scam that allows media bloviators to elevate themselves by pontificating about her Muhammad Ali-like swim.
Osaka's agent doubles as her lifeguard. His tweet was damage control, a life preserver flung into the ocean he created. Everyone has access to the video of his client taking on water.
No one likes the media, so he called the Cincinnati reporter a bully because people would believe that. That would make Osaka a victim, which the bogus social justice mob would eat up and then spit out as click-worthy narrative.
The truth is that the media were embarrassingly soft on Osaka, as always. Someone actually asked her if she was proud of herself for being so brave as to drop out of the French Open.
Ben Rothenberg from the New York Times tweeted this: "Four Qs or so went smoothly. Naomi was doing well. Then someone from Cincinnati Enquirer asked her a fairly aggressively toned question about how she benefits from a high media profile but doesn't like talking to the media. Osaka tried to engage, but after her answer began crying.
"This was deeply frustrating. The tennis media people who know Naomi (and whom Naomi knows) had it going smoothly, and then a local reporter completely derailed it. Don't blame this on `tennis media' again, folks."
Had it going smoothly? The media's job is to be a watchdog. It's a neat trick for a member of the media to argue that it wasn't the media's fault, but instead you should blame the media. In this case, Rothenberg was exonerating the clique of media that enable Osaka.
Cincinnati columnist Paul Daugherty asked Osaka, "You are not crazy about dealing with us, especially in this format. Yet you have a lot of outside interests that are served by having a media platform. I guess my question is: How do you balance the two?"
Osaka fumbled for an answer. The moderator asked if she'd like to move to the next question. Osaka said no, that she was interested in this one.
Does that sound as if she felt bullied?
I don't blame Osaka any more. If someone gave me $55 million and marketed me as a hero of humankind and the face of the Olympics, I'd probably jump, too.
But Osaka's handlers have used her up to sell products and are close to spitting her out. They have jeopardized a sure-fire Hall of Fame career. And if she cracks up?
Don't worry: The marketers will find someone else. They'll be fine.
Days before the French Open this year, Osaka announced that she would not participate in the tournament's required press conferences, saying the media are too hard on athletes. The tournament, as well as the other majors, threatened to fine and suspend her. Osaka then said she had mental health struggles in dealing with the press, and she pulled out of the tournament.
That whole thing was orchestrated by her enemy, her marketers, so they can take full control of her message.
It was a power play with the media. And most of the media buckled because Osaka fits so well into their social justice narrative. She's a black woman supporting Black Lives Matter and talking about mental health issues.
She can do no wrong, even quitting a tournament and blaming others.
So Osaka went on to withdraw from Wimbledon, light the cauldron at the Olympics, appear on magazine covers, and lose early at the Games.
She never smiled once. Osaka needs an intervention against the drugs of attention and money. In old Westerns, the good guys wore the white hats and the bad guys black hats. If only it were that simple for Osaka.Whitlock: Sports Illustrated ‘Swimsuit Issue’ another historic moment in the rewriting of American history
The left-wing obsession with placing itself on the right side of the fraudulent history that corporate media plans to write reached a historic zenith yesterday. At least Sports Illustrated thinks so.
The formerly iconic sports magazine trumpeted its 2021 Swimsuit Issue with bold proclamations about its history-making trifecta of cover models.
Tennis star Naomi Osaka is the first Haitian and Japanese cover model.
Megan Thee Stallion is the first rapper and uncastrated male horse cover model.
And Leyna Bloom, well, she's the GOAT of GOATs. Bloom is the first transgender cover model.
But that's not all. Osaka, Thee Stallion, and Bloom are the first trio of black people to grace the cover of SI's Swimsuit Issue.
Yesterday, blue-check Twitter and legacy media partied like it was 2099 and the Great Reset was celebrating its 70th birthday.
Cosmopolitan magazine tweeted with glee. "Megan Thee Stallion makes history as the first rapper ever to pose for 'Sports Illustrated Swimsuit' cover."
Page Six tweeted about Bloom and Osaka. Entertainment Weekly, People Magazine, the Today Show all threw Twitter confetti high in the air. This is progress. This is history. This is a transformational moment in American culture. This is Neil Armstrong taking one giant leap for mankind.
This swimsuit edition reminds me of other great moments in black history. My parents remember exactly where they were in 1947 when Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier. My grandparents fondly remember when Jesse Owens took four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics. Has anyone forgotten that day in 1974 when Hank Aaron smashed home run number 715 and surpassed Babe Ruth?
Who will forget this moment when desperate editors of a failing magazine resorted to a publicity stunt exploiting racial tension and gender dysphoria?
"This moment heals a lot of pain in the world," Leyna Bloom tweeted. "We deserve this moment; we have waited millions of years to show up as survivors and be seen as full humans filled with wonder."
I get Bloom's joy. Gender dysphoria is a serious issue. I'm not going to begrudge Bloom and other transgenders their sense of normalcy.
My problem is with packaging of gender dysphoria with the black race. Sports Illustrated made intentional, calculated choices. The company injected race into the Swimsuit equation. These choices are subjective. No one earns the Swimsuit cover. It's given. It's not an accomplishment. It's affirmative action.
There was a time when magazines such as Sports Illustrated gained attention celebrating the actual history-making accomplishments of all athletes. Now, legacy print publications and corporate media outlets troll the public for relevance and cast their virtue signals as historic moments.
Why wouldn't they? They plan to write the history your grandchildren and great-grandchildren will read. In the world that corporate media are plotting, immoral, pornographic rappers will be portrayed as thought leaders and public intellectuals. Biological men with the balls to surgically transition to women will be described as heroes and every bit as courageous as the soldiers who stormed Normandy.
In the aftermath of the Great Reset, the Christian values that led this country down the path to freedom and greatness will be characterized as evil.
My problem is that the puppet masters are using race and racism as the Trojan horses to socially engineer America into a new reality. No one made history with the SI covers. The Swimsuit Issue is the further rewriting of history. It's another companion to the New York Times' 1619 Project. Let's call it the 36-24-36 Project, written by the Alphabet Mafia.Fearless: LeBron James is helping tennis star Naomi Osaka build a phony social justice brand
When last we heard from Naomi Osaka, she was asking for private time to take care of her mental health. People didn't know how shy and introverted she really is, said Osaka, the world's most marketed and endorsed and richest female athlete. She dropped out of two major tennis championships not only for herself, but also for the selfless act of raising awareness of others with mental health issues.
Right? And it turns out that fortunately she was consulting with Dr. LeBron James and his friend and adviser, Dr. Maverick Carter, all along. They were there for her privacy with cameras rolling. James and Carter are the executive producers, we now find out thanks to a tweet from James, of a documentary about Osaka. It will be released July 16, the same day as "Space Jam: A New Legacy,'' where we'll see James play Robin to Bugs Bunny's Batman.
I'm not making any of this up. I'm trying to figure out the new narrative for Osaka, corporate social justice warrior. She could be, should be, and seems to want to be the most important female athlete in the world, maybe the most important athlete, period.
But she makes it so hard to believe in her. She tries to mix the look-at-me culture of social media with its I'm-here-for-you message. Throw in the heavy corporate packaging of her endorsers, and it takes away all sense of genuineness.
The same can be said for James. But this is about Osaka, and she is being handled so poorly, so recklessly, so hurtfully, so cynically that it's becoming increasingly difficult to take her seriously.
People are actually hurting. Mental health is an actual issue, not to be hijacked and trivialized by connecting it to a cartoon character or a desire to avoid talking to reporters.
Look, Naomi: Are you here to help people or are you here to sell shoes for Nike? You can't have both as your primary purpose.
If you don't know, Osaka is the best tennis player in the world. She jumped into our consciousness a few years ago by beating Serena Williams at the U.S. Open. She was shy and understated at the time.
It turns out she's even better: a strong and powerful woman. She chooses to stand up, or boycott and protest, for social justice issues. She wore a different mask every day at last year's U.S. Open, with the names written on them of people who had died at the hands of police.
She is a black woman and a Japanese woman, and her social justice stances and win over Williams — mixed with the upcoming Olympics being in Tokyo — made her a worldwide endorsement magnet. Forbes said she received more than $50 million in endorsements last year.
And then in the last week of May, she announced on social media that she would not talk to the press at the French Open — a requirement, as tournaments and sponsors like to have their products talked about around the world. Why? Because reporters ask the same questions over and over and it's hard on her mental health.
She never mentioned anything to the tour or to French Open officials. She never said, "Look, I have a problem talking with reporters. Can you help me?'' No, she announced on social media:
"If the organizations think they can just keep saying, `Do press or you're going to be fined,' and continue to ignore the mental health of athletes that are the centerpiece of their cooperation then I just gotta laugh.''
The tournament fined her. The leaders of tennis' majors got together and announced that if she continued with this, she could be kicked out.
And then she dropped out of the French Open and announced that she suffers from depression. After that, she withdrew from Wimbledon but said she'd compete in the Olympics. (Her endorsers have built her up there for years.) She will talk to the media there, too. And also, she said, she's on the cover of Vogue Japan.
It is just all so confusing. And if she really is in this to help others with mental health struggles, then good for her. God bless her, in fact. But that message gets lost when her actions contradict her words, while at the same time appease her corporate backers.
So it seems that her actions were more about an entitled athlete who doesn't want to talk to reporters because she and her handlers want complete control of her image. That's why you see athletes — Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, Derek Jeter, and now Osaka — making their own docuseries.
That's not social justice.
Look, I am a college tennis coach and I deal with young athletes every day. I do not take this lightly, though I was criticized by a Twitter mob when I wrote about it in the past few weeks. I spent the summer of 2020 trying to help preserve the mental health of my athletes. Get out into the sunshine, exercise for a few minutes, go for a walk or bike ride, do yoga for half an hour.
If Osaka is there for them, then I'm all for Osaka. She is in a great position to be just that meaningful.
But social justice has to come from the heart, not from corporate handlers trying to make themselves look good. Mental health or "Space Jam." The separation has to be clear.Today's top stories
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