I refrained from shouting at two women I heard speaking Russian because I can't tell the difference between Russian and other Slavic languages.
But Wimbledon probably identify the actual Russians. I think they did right.
I don't get why Russia was allowed in the Olympics (with the fudge that they had to call themselves something else).
Because they hadn't yet invaded Ukraine.
They had, just not as much of it. Plus, they were drugging all the athletes.
FIFA banned Russia from the World Cup qualifier after Poland, who they were scheduled to play, announced they would boycott any match with Russia. World Cup teams are representing their countries and I think in this case it was the right thing to do. Less sure about cases where individuals are involved who aren't representing their country as in the tennis. There was some kind of championship tennis match in Dubai a couple of months ago and a Russian player won it and he used the opportunity to speak out against the war.
What if the Russian athletes are allowed to play if they sign a non-loyalty oath?
One way of looking at it is this is a really positive first step toward the banning of all people of all countries from playing tennis. I only hope one day we can achieve this goal.
Maybe we should just ban grass courts? I don't understand how you bounce off grass.
If we're going to ban sports, we should start with golf.
Agreed. But that won't fuck with many Russians.
After golf and tennis, then we stamp out jazz.
It's a stupid and terrible decision. Tennis is not a team sport, and players don't represent their countries. Andrey Rublev spoke out against the war, and offered to donate any winnings to Ukrainian aid organizations. What sense does it make to bar him (or Medvedev, or Sablenka), because of their country of origin?
Stripping Wimbledon of its ranking points was undoubtedly the right decision in that context, but what a bummer. Federer and Serena are getting older every minute.
I'm familiar with arguments against golf and football, but what is the case against tennis? I know my wife hates watching it because the ball just goes back and forth. That is a way in which golf is better than tennis, because in golf the ball actually gets somewhere.
Also jazz? Is the argument that it leads kids to drugs and sexual debauchery?
You don't want to get into a splitting hairs race over when it's appropriate
But this is why Wimbledon's decision was so unfair and shortsighted. If Peng Shuai were playing this year, would that have meant that Wimbledon implicitly approved of China's treatment of ethnic minorities? Should Agassi and the Williams sisters been barred from tournaments after the US invaded Iraq?
13.1: I agree! I think we can take the chance that a pro-Putin Russian will win and make a propaganda victory out of it. It's not like it would actually change anybody's mind.
China has been horrible. Russia has been horrible to me. I don't think that Trump would have won without Russian help.I don't think Russia would have dared the bigger invasion if Trump hadn't appeared to have weakened NATO. "Fuck you, Russia" is my main foreign policy.
Endorse 17.
14.2: it just leads to more jazz.
I agree with 13, there's a relatively clear line here between individuals and national teams. All this ROC stuff was nonsense though, they should have been required to compete as unaffiliated individuals and barred from all olympic team competitions.
Supposedly, the U.S. is flying artillery to Europe for Ukraine and flying back with untainted baby formula. Synergy.
Golf is horrible but potentially redeemable if they introduce some croquet type rules. My personal favorite is defensive golf: every hole has two greens and two tees, the twosome (or two of each foursome) start at opposite and have the right to play their opponents' balls as well as their own (Stop it! That's not what I meant, and you know it). So this will introduce some dynamism as well as a defensive element to the game. as players will have to run to their balls after every shot to get to them before opponents have a chance to send them (the balls, not the players, although perhaps a subsequent rule revision ....) into orbit
I think they should use regular cars instead of the stupid carts.
22: No carts and also no caddies! If you want to have a bunch of different fancy clubs, you have to carry them.
First, ableist. Second, my way would chew up the courses in about a week.
Tennis on hoover boards would be great.
Honestly, a bigger disappointment than the flying cars.
I took up golf and I think it's quite appealing to people with a predisposition to gambling problems. Even if you suck you'll hit a pro-quality shot once every several hundred shots. I'll never throw a 90mph fastball but there's a small chance I'll get lucky and land a ball five feet from the hole from 150 yards. Probably why it attracts a higher than average number of pathological people.
What's the justification for the decision, because it seems obviously wrong?
Banning individuals because of what they've done: depending on the process, fine.
Banning individuals because of where they're from (or who they are): pretty much always bad.
As others have said, individuals do not represent their country in tennis. So sure, you want to ban the Russian team from the World Cup or the Olympics? Have at it. You want to ban Andrei Kirilenko from playing in the NBA? Too late, you idiot. He already retired.
What's the justification for the decision, because it seems obviously wrong?
Banning individuals because of what they've done: depending on the process, fine.
Banning individuals because of where they're from (or who they are): pretty much always bad.
As others have said, individuals do not represent their country in tennis. So sure, you want to ban the Russian team from the World Cup or the Olympics? Have at it. You want to ban Andrei Kirilenko from playing in the NBA? Too late, you idiot. He already retired.
Oh well, I guess I guessed wrong. Let 'em play!
People keep saying tennis players don't represent their countries, but it's not that simple. When they show the brackets on TV, by each player's name is the flag of their home country, or the country they play for, which is often not the country they were born in or even where they live now. For instance, Garbine Muguruza lives in Switzerland, was born in Venezuela, but is a Spanish tennis player. When Martina Navratilova left Czechoslovakia and sought asylum in the U.S. that reflected on both countries and it continued to be a political statement that she played tennis as an U.S.-ian. American tennis commentators definitely play up the "who are the best Americans" and French crowds root for French players. And hoo-doggie if you don't think the Serbians are invested in the success of Novak Djokovic let me introduce to a Serbian rando from a friend's Facebook page on the topic of Djokovic's being left out of the Australian Open for disregarding/flouting/lying about covid protocols. Tennis players may not be playing for a Russian team but they are still representing Russia.
I like Daniil Medvedev, and I'm sure it sucks to be banned from the most prestigious tennis tournament because of what your country is doing. Sucks a lot worse to be Ukranian.
You've made a good argument for not putting the players' home countries' flags next to their names. I support that proposal! But again, banning people because of where they're from, when, no matter how much nationalism/jingoism figures into sports entertainment, they're not representing their countries in these events, seems like a bad idea.
34: That make sense and yet . . .
What really made the difference in putting international pressure on South Africa? Divestment, I think, was the least important tactic. Its main significance was that it allowed many young people who wanted to show a disdain for apartheid to do so in the most conveniently local setting and therefore to make the revulsion for apartheid more powerfully global. More important by far in terms of making that revulsion felt within South Africa was the sports boycott. I remember some activists I knew seeing that as trivial, but that just showed how little we understood the mass psychology of South Africans. American college students building shantytowns was easy to sneer at, but not being allowed to play rugby abroad? Shit got real at that point.
Aren't we also banning just rich Russians who live abroad? Not banning, but restrictions and such.
If you're really rich in Russia you're almost certainly directly connected to the regime to that's completely logical. No Russian who has a megayacht got that rich without Putin's permission.
35: I have absolutely no idea if Tim is right. Nor does he, I'd venture. I also don't recall if individual South African athletes were banned from all competitions around the world. Were they? Regardless, Rugby, the sport he mentions, is played under a national flag. (There are rugby club teams, yes. But that's not, I don't think, the example he's using.)
Wikipedia says there was a lot of acrimony over South Africa's participation in the Davis Cup, and they were banned in 1979, but that's a cup with national teams. "South African players continued to compete on the pro tours."
38: The wikipedia entry is interesting, and it looks like the sports boycott covered a long period of time and varying pressure in different sports. It says both, "The register is regarded as having been an effective instrument." and "A 1999 academic paper argues that 'sport fulfilled an important symbolic function in the anti-apartheid struggle and was able to influence the other policy actors, but generally to a far less significant extent than is usually asserted'." I didn't check either of those footnotes.
The section on Boxing is an interesting example:
South Africa's amateur boxing association expelled from the AIBA in 1968.
The professional boxing South African Boxing Board of Control (SABBC) was expelled from the World Boxing Council (WBC) in 1975. The WBC remained vocal in opposition to apartheid, and refused to include South African boxers in its rankings.
The SABBC had affiliated to the rival World Boxing Association (WBA) in 1974. It was soon well represented on the WBA executive, and the 1978 conference was held there. Many WBA title fights were held there, some in Boputhatswana, a putatively independent bantustan. When John Tate beat Gerry Coetzee at Loftus Versfeld in 1979, the stadium had a desegregated audience for the first time. Although Don King criticised Tate's promoter Bob Arum for doing business in South Africa, King did so himself in 1984. In 1986 the WBA voted to suspend the SABBC until the end of apartheid. South African boxers remained eligible for WBA rankings and fights outside the country.
The Nevada State Athletic Commission withdrew from the WBA for a time in 1987, citing its lax apartheid policy as one reason.
34 would have made sense to be for thinking about the Olympics, after the occupation of large chunks of Ukraine but before the flat out invasion of the whole county. Now it's just a war. Banning people because of where they are from is standard in war.
Personally, I wouldn't go out too far on any limb supported by the ethics of the Nevada State Athletic Commission. I don't think this is very similar to the South African case. I think arguing that it is comes too close to the Russian case of arguing that Ukraine isn't a real separate country.
I don't think this is very similar to the South African case.
I brought up SA to argue that Sports bans might be an effective strategy, not because the two were precisely parallel. Like Von Wafer, I have no idea if that's actually correct, but it seems worth asking the question.
Individual South Africans were not banned from competing in sports competitions, certainly not in Tennis. From wikipedia "South African players continued to compete on the pro tours; Johan Kriek and Kevin Curren reached Grand Slam finals, though both later became naturalised US citizens." They were banned from national team competitions, which is appropriate, and certain South African organizations were kicked out of international organizations. I don't object to the Russian Tennis Association being suspended by the ITF.
Of course individual Russians can and should be banned if they individually do things bad things related to the war. For example, Karjakin's chess ban is completely appropriate. But Nepo is still competing, just not under the Russian flag (which weirdly was also true last cycle, but because of the doping ban rather than because of the war).
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School shooting in Uvalde Texas which seems to be closest to San Antonio .... I believe not too close to Heebieland? ....killed at least 14 kids in a in the local grades 3&4 school Robb Elementary ( I never heard of a school district setting up different schools for every be two years before...) in a district that serves a population of maybe 19,000.
Smaller than Sandy Hook but still mind reeling. Which is a strange thing to even think, yet there it is.
The town seems to be 80% Hispanic, the shootr seems to be a local high school student, apossibly aso Hispanic. Can we hope Abbot won't twist this into more anti-immigrant something?
I guess it's a totally normal state of American pregnancy to harbor fantasies of homeschooling one's incipient spawn for life.....
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How many green cards did we give to Germans who weren't refugees or traitors to Germany from 1941 through 1945? I mean, U.K. is a separate country, but if I recall correctly, they interned enemy civilians who were on their territory.
42: England isn't at war with Russia. (If I'm wrong about this, please let me know, because I'll want to make some important plans for the next few years.) But you're absolutely right that it's vanishingly unlikely that Russian tennis players will be welcome at the Kyiv Open this summer.
Anyway, as you explained above, your concern is domestic politics, which is fair enough. But I'm not sure how far you're willing to go to root out Russian influence in American politics. And I'm definitely not sure why you think that banning Russian tennis players from Wimbledon will help achieve that (or really any) goal.
48 to 47 as well, it seems. England isn't even a little bit at war with Russia, right? And the WWII analogy should probably be banned, I'm thinking, unless you want to start rounding up Russians and placing them in internment camps (which, to be fair to the Roosevelt administration, only became official policy after the United States declared war on Japan).
The U.K. is training and equipping Ukrainian troops. So is the U.S. Both are moving troops to countries bordering Ukraine to block further Russian attacks. Close enough for this.
49: Plus, that would get rid of about half of the worst parking on my street.
Right, that's domestic politics. I get it, man.
I guess they're probably citizens or resident aliens.
I had read rumors that the Wimbledon decision was in part because royals present the trophy, and they didn't want the possibility of a propaganda victory for Russia in terms of a photograph. I don't know that I have a strong opinion either way.
Can't they just avoid that issue the old fashioned way, by bribing the judges/umpire?
Didn't work as well with Andrew as for Charles.
Not sure about other boycotts, but IIRC the Olympic boycott in 1976 was driven by athletes from countries in Africa outside of South Africa. South Africa was already banned by that point, the boycott was over New Zealand not having been banned for treating South Africa as a "normal" country.
Obviously, the boycott was over apartheid. But the proximate cause was not the connection you might expect.
That was before McDonald's thought to have a contest based on the results of the games, so the boycott didn't impact America much.
OT: This baby formula crisis reminded me of my business idea. Formula that gives babies gas. Farting babies are hilarious.
Then capture and burn the gas to make electricity?
Americans ruin everything with economic logic.
American college students building shantytowns was easy to sneer at
After we built our shantytown, the campus Republicans (all 6 of them) built an (O)berlin Wall out of cardboard boxes to own the libs, as we didn't used to say, about how we didn't care when it was communists oppressing people.
I am not commenting on the Uvalde shooting because what is there left to say except that it's about a 2 hour drive from here, and a couple of years ago we spent a week in a cabin near there so there's that little added bit of horror of being able to picture the place.
I can't make myself read the stories anymore. At least not until some time has passed.
To 46, the two-grade school setup is due to desegregation of the schools. so that anglos and hispanics end up in the same one, versus the earlier neighborhood-school system.
Bringing the threads together, I learned last week that the only British man to win Wimbledon in 80+ years (all around great guy Andy Murray) was a 9-year old student in the building during the only major school shooting in the UK.
Even if that's causal, it's still a good idea to do gun control.
66: Thank for the helpful info and condolences.
Regarding Uvalde, I honestly thought Biden was magnificent last night. I normally don't watch these things because of the general futility of it all, but I was channel-hopping and happened upon it.
The gun thing is part of the broader crisis of democracy, and democrats seem destined to fail. But I think it matters how we lose, and Biden is at least preparing to lose here in the right way: by straightforwardly addressing the political roots of the problem in a timely fashion. No more of this "We mustn't bring politics into these inherently political situations." Good for Joe!
70: I guess that's a step forward, but at this point I don't give a shit what he's saying. The Dems still aren't putting anything forward, even to put the GOP on record. And is he taking any executive action?
My grandfather, a Jewish Austrian refugee, was briefly interned on the Isle of Man (I think) in 1940. Note that, legally speaking, he was a German at the time, because of the Anschluss.
In high school, I had to say "Anschluss" on stage and I fucked it up every time.
re: 67
Yeah, I grew up fairly nearby (less than 15 miles) and a college acquaintance had a cousin who died, and my Dad, at the time was an ambulance driver at the nearest major hospital so knew people involved in the incident and aftermath. My Dad wasn't involved as he transported vulnerable patients and he didn't do emergency callouts.
Agreed about Murray, too.
If it's really true, as thr OP and von "Why won't ANYONE think of the CHILDREN multi mullionaire tennis players??" wafer argue, that these tennis players are playing for themselves and not their country, they'd be perfectly happy to switch citizenship so they can carry on playing.
Do you think they're likely to do that?
No, nor do I.
Doesn't Switzerland have rules about who can be a citizen?
It's not like countries just give you citizenship in a month even if you're rich. Presumably there's some kind of path for Medvedev to get French or Monégasque citizenship eventually, but for Monaco you have to live there for 10 years, and for France I don't think he's still even a resident there.
You can buy a residence permit for lots of countries, but you can't buy citizenship.
I don't think Wimbledon has an obligation to ban Russians, and I don't think it much matters overall, but if the All England Lawn Tennis Club wants to stay far away from anything that promotes Russian propaganda, that's fine with me. Likewise, if the tennis bodies don't want to count Wimbledon in the rankings, that's entirely reasonable too.
I always try to find common ground. For instance, a lot of people reflexively disagree with Donald Trump, but I think he has a point here.
Thought for a moment maybe Dublev could get an Austrian passport, but a grandparent isn't enough for Austria as far as I can tell.
Money can't buy you love, except in the relationship sense.
66: We have an Uvalde lurker?! I am so incredibly sorry for what you and your community are faced with.
Also Heebieville had the 2-grade thing through the 2000s maybe. Not sure when it ended.
75: Although the proximate example was world-class athletes, some of whom are very rich, it's true, the deeper point was...eh, forget it. Go fuck yourself.
That was intemperate. Apologies to the community. It's been a long few days.
Yeah. Norms have been shifting here as we age. Now it's usually "Please feel free to go fuck yourself."
In the same spirit, all the busting on tennis up there makes me think this is a group of pickleball participants (wont say players since sucha sad excuse for a game). Tennis is great, so is ultimate and basketball, which I'm perennially sad about being too clumsy and slow to play effectively.
Cant we all just get along while still writing funny backbiting shitposts, is that too much to ask?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC_zffOenk8
oh hey real tennis, check this out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VBgq2S3J28
I still don't know what pickle ball is, but I now know it isn't gaga ball.
Is that real tennis as in royal tennis?
By any chance does anyone know how to get tickets to Wimbledon without either camping overnight or spending $500+ per ticket? Just grounds tickets, I'd be happy to watch court 24 or whatever.
That does remind me of a corollary to the "Could you win a single point against Serena Williams" that's used to illustrate the overconfidence of men*. What level of male amateur would in fact be able to win a point in a 2 of 3 set match? Good HS player? College? Tennis club instructor? Or if you're familiar with the international 7 point rating system, 4.5? 5.0?
*The ridiculous part of this was that many men who had never even played tennis seemed to think they could just pick up a racket and win a point.
I could look as stupid as Bobby Riggs, but I'd need help from experts in dressing like the 1970s.
Well, she might accidentally hit the ball out, once in a whole set.
That was the reasoning of many of the respondents, that maybe she'll double fault. The thing is, if her goal were to not allow a single point, against an amateur she could scale back her pace and placement to avoid the chance of unforced errors, and at that setting would still destroy most amateur men.
Right. I wouldn't expect to be able to return a single shot, except more or less by accident. But then I was a shitty tennis player last time I touched a racket 25 years ago.
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My daughter's high school BFF got himself arrested for civil disobedience at a Chipotle workers' rally. I am warning you all that when he gets around to running for office
I plan to be super obnoxious about fundraising for him.
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My email inbox reveals that you can't possibly make a noticeable difference.
97: This rally? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-26/eleven-arrested-at-chipotle-worker-rally-in-midtown-manhattan
Do you need to get an early start on fundraising to raise bail?
That's Jeremy! I believe he's covered for bail -- this was planned, not an accidental arrest.
91: AIMHMHB a similar survey found that 6% of American women believe they could defeat or kill a grizzly bear in unarmed combat, which makes me suspect the survey is just measuring either "number of men who don't know who Serena Williams is and are possibly thinking of Nancy Pelosi " or "number of men who give silly answers to surveys asking silly questions" rather than anything more fundamental about tennis or overconfidence or men.
Misunderstanding bears was a thing this week.
It was however hilarious that dsquared ran the numbers but forgot how many points were in a game of tennis: https://mobile.twitter.com/yorksranter/status/1150061246353461249
It was however hilarious that dsquared ran the numbers but forgot how many points were in a game of tennis: https://mobile.twitter.com/yorksranter/status/1150061246353461249
The police are parked in my driveway and I don't know where the officer is. I don't think I want to go around doors asking until I get the right house, so I'm just stuck. But the neighbors are going to think I did something again.
Now I know what house, but I can't intrude because there's a nondescript minivan with blacked out windows backed up to that house and a cart for moving a stretcher.
the survey is just measuring either "number of men who don't know who Serena Williams is and are possibly thinking of Nancy Pelosi "
All American men know who Serena Williams is. Surveys like this are just measuring sexism and racism. There's a lot!
109:2 That is unfair! Men can have delusions of grandeur and/or be stupid without being especially sexist or racist.
If the man thinks he can win a fight against a bear, then why shouldn't he also believe he can win a point from Serena Williams?
I didn't win a point when I played against Nancy Pelosi.
Men can have delusions of grandeur and/or be stupid without being especially sexist or racist.
Sure, but most American men with delusions of grandeur are in fact also sexist and racist. I don't know if anyone's run a similar survey about, say, Steffi Graf or Novak Djokovic, but I suspect I know how the results would compare.
Novak Djokovic is an asshole for trying to lie his way into Australia and then doubly for getting caught and not saying, "I thought you still needed a criminal record."