Go Fight Win? Or Just Go Fight.
At first, I wasn’t going to comment on the Imus/Rutgers thing. I kind of felt like everything that could be said about it had already been said.
And then I heard this about the Imus flap: "These days, it seems like you can’t say anything without offending someone."
Excuse me?
Can someone please explain exactly when it was ever appropriate to make racial or other slurs?
Don’t make Imus a martyr. This isn’t a free speech issue. It’s about decency. And respect. And using some goddamn restraint.
The women’s basketball team at Rutgers - or any other team - should not be the collective butt of a very unfunny joke. It’s not fair, it’s not appropriate and again, it’s not funny.
These kids and they are just that, kids, deserve more than a canned corporate apology. They went out, they played their hearts out in a game that they seem to love and their "reward" is to be mocked publicly. In one fell swoop, their amazing year was seemingly denigrated and largely overshadowed by comments disparaging their gender, character, race and appearance. Nice.
And let’s stop referring to them like they aren’t individuals, and are just an entity that’s the butt of a joke. They are Katie Adams, Matee Ajavon, Essence Carson, Dee Dee Jernigan, Rashidat Junaid, Myia McCurdy, Epiphanny Prince, Judith Brittany Ray, Kia Vaughn and Heather Zurich. They had a season that went 27-9. They went to the national championship, the first appearance ever for the Lady Scarlet Knights. And while they didn’t win the big dance, they did win the Big East tourney title and the NCAA Greensboro Region championship.
Women’s basketball has been recognized as a sport since 1892, one year after men’s basketball was officially recognized. However, the first organized national tournament for women’s basketball was more than 75 years later, in 1969; the first men’s basketball national tournament
happened in 1939.
Women in sports have never had it easy, especially in sports that are thought of as traditionally male sports. I hope that we don’t just brush aside these kids as a team that "almost won", maybe we should think about what it is that they accomplished. I mean, beyond the stats and the tourneys. These girls, like the other female athletics in the NCAA are the role models for our children.
The names that I remember from my childhood were Dorothy Hamill, Peggy Fleming and Mary Lou Retton. I didn’t know the names of women basketball players like Sheryl Swoopes, Rebecca Lobo or Dawn Staley. But my kids will. That’s very cool. And that is the real legacy of these women from Rutgers: they are a part of something bigger than just basketball.
It’s painful for me, as a woman and a mom, to see these girls being made the butt of a bad joke now. And I feel for them. I wouldn’t even know what to do if someone treated my daughter like that in this extremely tasteless and public manner. But what I do know is this: I am proud of all of the female student athletes who put themselves out there and play their hardest in a sport that they love. These girls know that they won’t get the recognition or the money or the kudos that the boys do. They just love the game. And some idiot spouting off for a cheap laugh doesn’t change that.
Someday, maybe one of my girls will sport a Kia Vaughn jersey. Then we’ll know who really had the last laugh.