Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

I did not have this on my fuck 2025 bingo card.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

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Reader Interactions

71Comments

  6. 6.

    Schlemazel

    Had Korean Bulgogi for lunch. Went for a long bike ride along the Minnesota River. The weather was perfect except for a bit of wind. Grilled a ribeye for dinner & am enjoying a peanut butter stout (hard to believe but really much better than it sounds).

    The days don’t get much better than this one

  7. 7.

    Mary G

    Underrated worst take of the night: men saying that Naomi Osaka could have at least “smiled” while being booed on stage after her win. Somebody hand me Cardi’s other shoe so I can throw it— Robin Thede (@robinthede) September 9, 2018

  9. 9.

    SenyorDave

    Patrick Mouratoglou admitted to coaching Serena Williams during the U.S. Open final, but believes she never received his message.

    So the coach was coaching her and there is a rule against it, and the umpire enforced the rule. I certainly see how she got screwed.

  10. 10.

    NotMax

    Is that tweet supposed to mean something? It’s too garbled to even qualify as gibberish.

    @Duane

    Or Chef Boy-ar-dee in a Speedo.

    ;)

  13. 13.

    zhena gogolia

    @NotMax:

    I’m glad I’m not the only one who has no idea what that tweet is about. Seems to be some truly disgusting foodstuff.

    Speaking of which, how’s the wasabi challah?

  16. 16.

    randy khan

    @SenyorDave:

    I’m confident there are going to be many exciting takes on this, but if you’re going to say something about Mouratoglou’s interview, you might also add that he said that Osaka’s coach was doing the same thing the whole match. His argument was that everyone’s always doing it and somehow Serena just happened to be the only one who got penalized for it.

    Personally, I feel the “no coaching” rule is stupid, but since it’s there, it should be enforced uniformly.

    And Williams has a history of unusual rulings against her in late rounds at the U.S. Open. It *could* be random, I suppose.

  23. 23.

    jl

    @opiejeanne: From clips I saw after the match, Serena was totally classy and did the right thing, even though probably hard for her.

    I don’t know if her coach tried to sneak a signal or not. but the other penalties on Williams seem excessively. The officials seem to give guys more leeway, but I don’t follow tennis that closely. I just have seen clips of high stakes matches where they guys are allowed to talk back and act out a little when frustrated and nothing happens to them.

    And there is some idiot dress code flap too?

  24. 24.

    randy khan

    @Mary G:

    My God, that’s appalling.

    Whatever else you might think about what Williams did tonight, she recognized that the boo birds needed to be shut down, and that she was the only one who could do it. (I mean, they were booing the President of the USTA, who had exactly nothing to do with the rulings.) She gave Osaka a chance to remember tonight more fondly.

    (There was reporting after the match that some of the Williams team came down to the court after the umpire awarded the game to Osaka to urge Williams to quit the match. Despite her obvious utterly distraught state at the point, at least she was clear-headed enough to know that was a really bad, bad idea.)

  26. 26.

    germy

    I had a problem with our cat waking me up 4:30 am for food.

    I always made sure her dish was full before I went to bed, but she’d finish her food early in the morning and disturb my sleep. It’s become quite a problem. I need my sleep, the little I get.

    My wife noticed if we give the cat a can of “gravy food” she’ll eat it all up immediately, and then two hours later howl as if she hasn’t eaten all day. I give her paté food, which stays with her longer, but still it’s only 9 or 10 percent protein.

    My wife simmered a chicken breast in some water while I boiled an egg. When the chicken was cooked, she put it in a food processor along with the hardboiled egg. The resulting paté we put in a glass jar and refrigerated.

    Before bed, I put the homemade cat food in the cat’s dish. The next morning, it was eaten, but the cat was so satisfied she let us sleep late. The chicken/egg blend really sticks to her ribs, unlike the cat food.

    She still gets her commercial food, but we’re supplementing with the chicken/egg blend at night.

    The cat’s coat looks better, and she seems to have more pep.

    My wife says I have more pep, too.

  29. 29.

    Angrifon

    @NotMax: The item pictured is a Fruity Pebbles Krispie Bar made with edible cannabis oil or butter. Dosage is variable but the commercial ones have between 250mg and 1000mg of THC. Beginner’s recommended dosage is 10mg. Edible cannabis takes between 30 minutes to 2 hours to activate because it has to be processed through your liver to convert to the form of THC that gets you high. So this person has eaten potentially 300 to 400 times the recommended beginner dose. Hence the response indicating that the OP is about to take a wild ride.

  32. 32.

    J R in WV

    When we visited Colorado last September, we were always in hotels, no smoking everywhere, though we saw in small hip towns signs for “Smoking Rooms Available”! So we bought edibles, delightful chocolate truffles, in a child-proof container. Many of them. Two was just right, giggles without being stupid.

    Denver, small highways to Florence to Pueblo, site of friends 4oth wedding anniversary, we introduced them (kind of complicated, but that) those many years ago. Big fun. Back to Denver to fly out.

    Arriving at Denver to depart, we ate all the remaining truffles as we checked in the Rental and took the shuttle to the airport. Best flights home evah! Relaxed all the way, but calm to drive home 14 hours later that night. Colorado is the best for 420 vacations. Since then we have been to CA, but missed stopping at any “dispensaries” while out there.

    Don’t know about doing 4 edibles and still not knowing what to expect… probably gonna be like Maureen Dowd, falling down stoned.

  33. 33.

    CarolPW

    @germy: Good for you getting more sleep. But if that meal is more than a trivial amount of what she eats, you should add a chicken heart or liver to it (taurine) and it wouldn’t hurt to pulverize an egg shell and add a pinch to it too (calcium).

  34. 34.

    NotMax

    @Angrifon

    Forget the rest. Fruity Pebbles? The horror, the horror.

    Also too, wouldn’t the munchies make one want to eat a pony rather than buy one?

    As to the nonsensically laid out Roman numerals, I shall simply shake my head in disappointment.

  35. 35.

    germy

    @CarolPW: Thank you, good advice. My wife says she wants to get some chicken heart to add to the white meat.

    Our cat is still mostly eating her commercial paté. I avoid the “gravy” and “grilled” stuff because it’s just too much starch.

  36. 36.

    Barbara

    I think Osaka was well on the way to winning and Williams was more upset about being broken again, hence the racket smashing, and after that she just lost her cool. Really, it was too bad and I think the ref should have been more judicious, especially in a final, but she really did lose it.

  37. 37.

    Gex

    @randy khan: This. I watch tennis all the time, not just the slams. This happens always and I’ve never before seen a player penalized. To take the unusual step to enforce the rule on Serena in a slam final is, well, I can only assume the umpire has an ego issue, and issue with Serena, or both.

  38. 38.

    Juice Box

    Serena smashed her racket because the kid was walloping her. She should have taken the point because she wasn’t going to break Osaka’s serve anyway. She was being outplayed.

  39. 39.

    Suzanne

    @Angrifon:

    Fruity Pebbles Krispie Bar

    Okay, THAT’S what that is. I thought it looked like a bunch of gummy bears that got melted together.
    All those edibles look unappealing, though I am aware that they aren’t aiming for gourmet pastries or anything.

  40. 40.

    Barbara

    @randy khan: I know he said that but is there any evidence of it? It just seemed like something to say in the moment. Normally, it is the player in a tight spot whose coach tries to send signals, not the one who is ahead.

  41. 41.

    Another Scott

    @J R in WV: Early in Colorado’s legalization days, in 2014, there was a story about a few college kids who went there to get stoned. One of them ate an edible cookie for the first time, had a bad reaction to it, started freaking out, and fell several stories in the hotel lobby. :-(

    Details.

    These things aren’t candy and first-time users really need to know what they’re doing…

    :-(

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  46. 46.

    SenyorDave

    @randy khan: you might also add that he said that Osaka’s coach was doing the same thing the whole match.

    So the guy who admitted cheating says that her opponent was also cheating. We’re supposed to take the word of a cheater? Did Osaka or her coach confess to cheating? Did observers feel that Osaka and her coach were cheating?

    The big US Open call against SW that you refer to to was the foot fault in the 2009 Open. And she probably would have engendered more sympathy for herself if she hadn’t screamed at the umpire that she would like to “shove a ball down your fucking throat”.

    She was losing, got called on something usually not called, and lost it. When the GOAT goes after an official it isn’t going to end well. She publicly called the guy a thief for enforcing a rule that her own coach admitted breaking.

  47. 47.

    Brachiator

    @Another Scott:
    A very sad story, but also unusual. There have been very few cannabis related deaths since legalization. And stores have got better about consumer information about edibles. And the news story noted that 45 percent of product sales are for edibles.

    ETA. It’s funny. I don’t know anyone who admits to a cannabis purchase since California legalization. And I see ads for some places in a local free newspaper, but am not all that curious. I think that, oddly enough, existing no smoking laws also serve as a deterrent in some areas.

  49. 49.

    Brachiator

    @SenyorDave: You seem to be making a bigger deal of the US Open incident than Williams herself.

    The announcers agreed that coaching goes on all the time, but is not often called. Is it cheating if no one really cares?

    The penalty for some of the code violations seem excessive to me, but I am not a big tennis fan. Maybe some of the rules need to be reevaluated.

    I’m just sorry that controversy interfered with and tainted a good tennis match. I hope that this doesn’t affect either player going forward.

  50. 50.

    Felanius Kootea

    @SenyorDave:You might want to read the liberal Chicago Tribune’s take on how a lot of this was sexism on Umpire Carlos Ramos’ part and how he penalized her more harshly than he has penalized male tennis athletes like Rafi Nadal for worse infractions.

    After learning that Serena is the most drug-tested tennis player in history, I understand her resentment at being accused of cheating.

  52. 52.

    randy khan

    @Barbara:

    If I know anything about pro sports, it’s that people seek whatever edges they can get, including their coaches. I’d want evidence to the contrary before I believed that coaches don’t do it all the time.

  53. 53.

    lamh36

    it’s never more obvious the underlying unease some folks have with women, particularly Black women, showing emotion or anger.

    Also too, I’m never surprised at the amount of “get over it” the Williams sisters get, particular Serena, as opposed to other players.

    The amount of shit that get thown at Serena is ridiculous and telling, but because it’s Serena…folks lose their shit and somehow some way, it’s must be something she’s doing, not that they are targeting her.

    Oh, btw:

    @Zaggy_Stardust
    “NOVAK DJOKOVIC felt hard done-by when umpire Carlos Ramos failed to penalise Kei Nishikori for throwing his racket.” #USOpen

    Novak Djokovic explains Wimbledon umpire argument: ‘It’s not fair!’ http://shr.gs/EA5mf9R

    @ShepherdIdris
    Same umpire did it to Venus and gave her a coaching violation

    6:29 PM – Sep 8, 2018 · Queens, NY
    https://twitter.com/ShepherdIdris/status/1038569968416243714

    But yeah…that darn Serena

  54. 54.

    lamh36

    @lamh36: Anyway, I’ll let Serena speak for herself.

    @briankoppelman
    Follow Follow @briankoppelman
    More
    For those saying the coaching call was accurate: it’s selective enforcement! Don’t come at me with this. Again—I’m not a casual observer of tennis. I have a lifelong engagement with it including codirecting a documentary about Connors and US Open.

    5:14 PM – 8 Sep 2018

    @andyroddick
    Follow Follow @andyroddick
    More
    Worst refereeing I’ve ever seen …… the worst !!!

    4:35 PM – 8 Sep 2018

    @BillieJeanKing
    51m51 minutes ago
    More
    (1/2) Several things went very wrong during the @usopen Women’s Finals today. Coaching on every point should be allowed in tennis. It isn’t, and as a result, a player was penalized for the actions of her coach. This should not happen.

    @BillieJeanKing
    50m50 minutes ago
    More
    (2/2) When a woman is emotional, she’s “hysterical” and she’s penalized for it. When a man does the same, he’s “outspoken” & and there are no repercussions. Thank you, @serenawilliams, for calling out this double standard. More voices are needed to do the same.

    https://twitter.com/CamCox12/status/1038558762376679425

  55. 55.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Josh Barro @ jbarro
    And after all that Serena is there to try to save them from themselves

    It’s like the people who run professional tennis don’t want the sport to have fans

  57. 57.

    Mo MacArbie

    In CA, edibles are more tightly controlled now than they were when it was just legal for medical use, though I don’t know if patients can still get the stronger ones. Basically, an edible unit can’t exceed 10mg THC, so one can’t buy a brownie and cut it up into the desired dose anymore. Instead, there are 10-packs of candies at 10mg per gummy worm.

  58. 58.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Charles P. Pierce @ CharlesPPierce
    I covered the US Open for five straight years in the Connors-Mac era. That umpire needs to grow a thicker hide.

    I also remember a player named Ilie Nastase, so well known as an asshole that I remember a caricature, I wanna say in Mad Magazine (that’s how old I was), of him snarling and flipping off the world

  59. 59.

    Aleta

    I was going to link this morning, this good article by by Erika Nicole Kendall. Serena Williams’ ability made us take for granted all that she had to overcome.
    A few lines here and there also reminded me of RW reactions to Obama, Harris, Booker (lots more are coming I think) and LW reactions to Obama, Pelosi.

    A black girl from Compton — a California city that wider society largely associated solely with gang violence and rap music at the time — working hard, winning and being coached and loved by a father ever present on the sidelines wasn’t what people expected in tennis stars. Or, to be honest, it wasn’t what they expected of black girls, period.

    She rarely received the praise she deserved simply because people didn’t know what to do with her as a premiere athlete in a blindingly white sport. Instead, they wanted to talk about her appearance — like when a sportscaster quipped that Serena and her sister Venus Williams were ”animals” who were “better suited for National Geographic than Playboy.”

    (Edited to add: (When she was 19) “at the 2001 Indian Wells final Serena, Venus, and their father, Richard, were booed by the overwhelmingly white, wealthy Indian Wells crowd. … The stadium reverberated with a wild, hateful, unrelenting sound.” (from Grantland in 2015))

    Her father also said they were called racial slurs and threatened with violence.* (That horrible story is at ABC News.)

    Or there was the time that a tennis legend quipped about her unborn child’s future skin color — and, when he was criticized for it, stated his comments would’ve only been racist if he’d said something along the lines of her having an “ugly, black baby.”
    …
    But the sexism has been equally gross. In a downright stunning article from 2015, several women who had failed to defeat Serena on the court tried to explain their failures away by blaming it on “body image issues.” Tennis coach Tomasz Wiktorowski said, “It’s our decision to keep [48th-ranked Agnieszka Radwanska] as the smallest player in the top 10 […] because, first of all, she’s a woman, and she wants to be a woman.”

    It’s a common theme: Her perceived attractiveness instead of her skill has been discussed more times than I can count. Everyone from former New Jersey governor Chris Christie to sportswriter Jason Whitlock — neither of whom has a lot of personal experience in this field of play — has weighed in on their lack of desire for her using words like “unsightly” and “oversized.”
    …
    The racism and sexism she’s experienced to which we’ve borne witness has resulted in us taking for granted the presence of this remarkable athlete, someone who has exemplified everything we claim to want in a sports star. The perseverance and resilience she has embodied despite countless dehumanizing experiences was intended to weaken her, make her less of a competitor and eventually break her down to the point of ending her reign atop her chosen sport. It has not.

    What makes Williams such an noteworthy figure, and genuinely a role model for both young and old, is how so much of her story is exemplary of the American Dream. … In an era where we recognize how a person’s identity can be used as a way to demean them, Serena has had the gauntlet thrown at her and not only survived, but thrived.

    It’s just a shame that so much of what she has had to survive comes from the same public she competes to entertain.

  60. 60.

    DissidentFish

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Please, with the 70’s. Those players were awful, and were penalized right and left. Umpires are universally more inclined to enforce now and it’s been that way for Williams’ entire career.

    The first call is iffy, but it is undeniable he was coaching, and the coaching was having an effect, too. The second automatic (note to person who posted about Djokovic/Nishikori above — Djokovic did get a warning in that match for exactly the racquet slam Serena did. Read your link). The third? Well, call someone a liar and a thief and see how it works out for you. At every level of tennis, that will get you a penalty.

    I love Serena and she is the GOAT. But she is a jock, and the kind of jock who can’t help but blame others when she’s frustrated. It was her behavior that ruined the match. She may have been gracious afterwards, but she was a pill and a jerk during. Come at me.

  61. 61.

    Felanius Kootea

    @DissidentFish: We don’t need to come at you, oh commenter on a top 10,000 blog. The WTA has declared its intention to investigate Carlos Ramos’ actions. I’ll take what they find over your no-doubt expert opinion, if you don’t mind.

  62. 62.

    Felanius Kootea

    By the way, Naomi Osaka has beaten Serena Williams before (at the Miami Open) without controversy and Serena was gracious in her loss. What made today controversial was the umpire’s actions.

  63. 63.

    Anotherlurker

    @Angrifon: Warning! Warning! Totally (almost) off topic.
    I had the pleasure of sharing my “Special” brownies, at the request of a friend of mine. Julie, my friend, is an R.N and her friend was a Cancer patient. The friend was battling the final months of Lung Cancer. The Chemo had him sick and exhausted.
    Julie (friend) called me at 10pm. She and her friend and his wife had attempted to go out to dinner and George (her friend) couldn’t do it. He was too sick. Julie called me to ask for some brownies, to see if they could help. She arrived at my house @ 11pm, accepted 6 1″x1″ brownies and was on her way. I had suggested to her to divide the squares into 3 pieces. She departed at 11:10ish, pm.
    I get a phone call from Julie, the next day, thanking me. George consumed 1/4 of a brownie before trying again to go out to dinner. Long story short(er), he was able to enjoy a meal and a glass of wine. He used the brownies sparingly, for the next 2 months, before he finially succumbed .
    I was very happy that I could help relieve his pain, a little bit and enable him to enjoy some simple things befor he died.
    PS: Julie asked me for some more brownies , to try them for herself. I gave her a few and emphatically told her to cut each 1″ square into 1/3rds and wait at least 45 minutes before eating any more. Well, at midnight, I get a phone call. I answer and its Julie. Imagine a heavy Queens accent asking me “WTF! did you do to me?” I asked her how much she consumed and she said she ate 1 and 1/2 brownies in about 45 minutes! I burst out laughing and told her she was a knucklehead and that her impatient nature was a hoot! She giggled and then broke into a hearty belly laugh. From there we talked about boyfriends and girlfriends, premium dogfood, our love for our dogs, who is the best guitarist, the Marx Brothers and all the varied, wonderful, trivial and esoteric directions a stoned conversation can lead to. We laughed a lot and at the end of an hour, said goodnight.
    Lesson to learned: Be patient with edibles.

  64. 64.

    Aleta

    Sally Jenkins, WaPo

    Chair umpire Carlos Ramos managed to rob not one but two players in the women’s U.S. Open final. Nobody has ever seen anything like it: An umpire so wrecked a big occasion that both players, Naomi Osaka and Serena Williams alike, wound up distraught with tears streaming down their faces during the trophy presentation and an incensed crowd screamed boos at the court. Ramos took what began as a minor infraction and turned it into one of the nastiest and most emotional controversies in the history of tennis, all because he couldn’t take a woman speaking sharply to him.

    Williams abused her racket, but Ramos did something far uglier: He abused his authority. Champions get heated — it’s their nature to burn. All good umpires in every sport understand that the heart of their job is to help temper the moment, to turn the dial down, not up, and to be quiet stewards of the event rather than to let their own temper play a role in determining the outcome. Instead, Ramos made himself the chief player in the women’s final.

    He marred Osaka’s first Grand Slam title and one of Williams’s last bids for all-time greatness. Over what? A tone of voice. Male players have sworn and cursed at the top of their lungs, hurled and blasted their equipment into shards, and never been penalized as Williams was in the second set of the U.S. Open final.

    “I just feel like the fact that I have to go through this is just an example for the next person that has emotions and that want to express themselves and wants to be a strong woman,” she said afterward.

    It was pure pettiness from Ramos that started the ugly cascade in the first place, when he issued a warning over “coaching,” as if a signal from Patrick Mouratoglou in the grandstand has ever been the difference in a Serena Williams match. It was a technicality that could be called on any player in any match on any occasion and ludicrous in view of the power-on-power match that was taking place on the court between Williams and the 20-year-old Osaka. …

    When Williams, still seething, busted her racket over losing a crucial game, Ramos docked her a point. Breaking equipment is a violation, and because Ramos already had hit her with the coaching violation, it was a second offense and so ratcheted up the penalty.

    The controversy should have ended there. At that moment, it was up to Ramos to de-escalate the situation, to stop inserting himself into the match and to let things play out on the court. In front of him were two players in a sweltering state, who were giving their everything, while he sat at a lordly height above them. Below him, Williams vented, “You stole a point from me. You’re a thief.”

    There was absolutely nothing worthy of penalizing in the statement. It was pure vapor release. She said it in a tone of wrath, but it was compressed and controlled. All Ramos had to do was to continue to sit coolly above it, and Williams would have channeled herself back into the match. But he couldn’t take it. He wasn’t going to let a woman talk to him that way.

    A man, sure. Ramos has put up with worse from a man. At the French Open in 2017, Ramos leveled Rafael Nadal with a ticky-tacky penalty over a time delay, and Nadal told him he would see to it that Ramos never refereed one of his matches again. But he wasn’t going to take it from a woman pointing a finger at him and speaking in a tone of aggression.

    So he gave Williams that third violation for “verbal abuse” and a whole game penalty, and now it was 5-3, and we will never know whether young Osaka really won the 2018 U.S. Open or had it handed to her by a man who was going to make Serena Williams feel his power. It was an offense far worse than any that Williams committed. Chris Evert spoke for the entire crowd and television audience when she said, “I’ve been in tennis a long time, and I’ve never seen anything like it.”

    Competitive rage has long been Williams’s fuel, and it’s a situational personality. The whole world knows that about her, and so does Ramos. She has had instances where she ranted and deserved to be disciplined, but she has outlived all that.

    She has become a player of directed passion, done the admirable work of learning self-command and grown into one of the more courteous and generous champions in the game. If you doubted that, all you had to do was watch how she got a hold of herself once the match was over and how hard she tried to make it about Osaka.

    Williams understood that she was the only person in the stadium who had the power to make that incensed crowd stop booing. And she did it beautifully. “Let’s make this the best moment we can,” she said.

    The tumultuous emotions at the end of the match were complex and deep. Osaka didn’t want to be given anything and wept over the spoil. Williams was sickened by what had been taken from her and also palpably ill over her part in depriving a great new young player of her moment. The crowd was livid on behalf of both.

    Ramos had rescued his ego and, in the act, taken something from Williams and Osaka that they can never get back. Perhaps the most important job of all for an umpire is to respect the ephemeral nature of the competitors and the contest. Osaka can never, ever recover this moment. It’s gone. Williams can never, ever recover this night. It’s gone. And so Williams was entirely right in calling him a “thief.”

  66. 66.

    DissidentFish

    @Felanius Kootea: I’m sorry I think perhaps you misinterpreted my post.

    I can’t tell you how much I’ve been looking forward to Serena’s return to the winner’s circle as fan, her play is amazing to me. And I was really looking forward to tonight’s match. The way it turned out upset me — I watched every point — and I was hoping some of the people above, whose views are different than mine, would do me the kindness of a discussion on the comment board.

    I don’t need appeals to authority, be it the USTA or Jenkins at the Washington Post, so much as to work it out in my head with people whose opinions I respect. Sometimes it seems like this place is a community like that.

    But I suppose the lack of people from above responding says all I need to know about that. Truth is my presence is probably little valued, and my absence would be little noticed.

    But thanks Felanius for helping me see past the illusion that I can express things deserving of any others’ consideration here.

  67. 67.

    WaterGirl

    @lamh36: I think of it as their female version of “thug”.

    Not that they are anything alike, but this reminds me of all the “Omarosa scares me” bullshit from several weeks ago.

    Black, female, strong body, unapologetic = SCARY
    What a bunch of bigoted assholes!

  68. 68.

    Barbara

    Umpire was wrong but Osaka was almost certainly going to win and the most exciting new player since the Williams sisters is being totally overshadowed. I love Serena but women’s tennis needs more players who can challenge her. So umpire was wrong but I wish Serena had been able to go after him later, after the match.

  69. 69.

    Anne

    I like the website, windy.com, for tracking hurricanes. You can see wind, rain, clouds, waves, temps on it. It’s updated all of the time.

  70. 70.

    Bloix

    Serena got beat and blamed the umpire. Her coach confessed to making signals and said “everybody does it.” The Paul Manafort defense. She got a warning – no penalty, just a warning! – and how did she respond? She smashed her racket and accused the umpire of cheating her. No, Serena, your coach was cheating. He confessed! And you accused the umpire. A little projection, there, Serena.

  71. 71.

    Aleta

    At Slate

    the official Grand Slam rule book for 2018 reads (emphasis mine):

    Players shall not receive coaching during a match (including the warm-up). Communications of any kind, audible or visible, between a player and a coach may be construed as coaching.

    If Mouratoglou was signaling but Williams wasn’t receiving those signals, that can’t possibly constitute communication between a player and a coach. Given that they were on opposite sides of the court, it would seem very difficult for the chair umpire to determine with absolute certainty that Williams was buying what Mouratoglou was selling, thumb-wise. Mouratoglou is also right that illegal coaching is rampant and rarely called. As ESPN’s Chris Evert said after the match, “It’s against the rules and every coach does it.”

    On the matter of Patrick Mouratoglou’s thumb, then, Williams was right and Ramos was wrong. A rule that is unclear and is capriciously enforced is by definition a bad rule and should either be altered or discarded. Given that the rule does exist, a sensible umpire shouldn’t invoke it unless he witnesses an unmistakably flagrant violation. Mouratoglou’s hand signal did not rise nearly to that level, and so Ramos should have stuck to doing whatever it is that chair umpires do when they’re not saying “Love” instead of “zero.” If you’d like to argue that this whole episode was Ramos’ fault, because none of it would’ve happened if he hadn’t made that first dumb call, then you would not be wrong.

    Williams was right to say she doesn’t cheat; there’s no evidence she does, based on the typical practices of her sport. She was wrong to say Ramos owed her an apology, though. While illegal coaching isn’t called all that often, it’s also not anywhere close to unprecedented. There’s also no stigma attached to it. No one thinks that Svetlana Kuznetsova, Garbine Muguruza, Alexander Zverev, Novak Djokovic, or anyone else who’s been penalized for or accused of getting in-match coaching is some kind of enormous cheater.

    (Article is a both sides wrong opinion.)

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