Humble servant of the Nation

The simple fact overlooked in Serena Williams fallout

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It’s a tricky move to attach gender or race motives to an umpire officiating a tennis match between two women: one Afro-American, the other half-Japanese, half-Haitian but one by one, too many members of the commentariat to count worked overtime to pull it off.

In the morass of Op-Eds scrawled in the wake of the US women’s Open final, focus quickly became lost and one rather simple fact was ignored:

The umpire is always right.

Take this tweet from ABC presenter, Virginia Trioli. She claimed to have read almost all there was to read about what had happened and only then had been moved to judgment by way of retweet with comment. The retweet was of a judgy columnist, Margaret Sullivan, who splatters words around for the Washington Post and the New York Times, sometimes in some recognisable order. She, in turn, was tweeting up a rapidly cobbled together think piece from Sally Jenkins at WaPo. Jenkins, Sullivan enthused, got it “exactly right.”

Full column here.

356 Comments

  • BASSMAN says:

    New Looter for Wentworth David Sharma in DEEP SHIT for hitting on teachers. Doesn’t he know? There are NO VOTES in bashing teachers, nurses, cops or fireys….COMMENTS:- “Maaate. Married to a teacher! She started this morning at 5:50 and worked on and off during the day! If Sharma had knocked in the door he would have a laptop embedded in his skull! How do the Fiberals keep finding people who have no effing clue??” /”My teacher daughter is spending her weekend marking essays. Not an uncommon event.”/ “My son in law is a phys ed teacher at a school in Melbourne. When I was there on holiday he was getting up at 4.30 am to take the kids to a tournament , drive a school bus there, get home at 10.30″.

    • Jean Baptiste says:

      I wouldn’t say there are no votes in bashing the workers in Wentworth BASSY. I’m sure there are quite a few there who would happily bash the workers and horsewhip the peasants if they could get away with it.

    • Razor says:

      Plenty of votes in bagging cops and teachers Bassy. None in nurses and firey’s.

  • Henry Donald J Blofeld says:

    Defining moments in Politics, Mr. Insider and one here in 1993 when Mike Willisee asked Leader of the Lib/Nat Opposition to explain the fairly new at the time the GST.
    I don’t know what word describes Hewson’s PM ambitions after that, perhaps “Titanical”?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WndWM71-jSQ

  • BASSMAN says:

    Geez……Too frightened to discuss Knight’s cartoon on Grinsiders “Talking Pictures” eh?
    Bleak dead right…PC gone mad. I could not envisage any legals in such a discussion? Any lawyers here?
    I was hoping Jack would have been on. Don’t think he would have sidestepped it.

    Reynolds!!!

  • Bella says:

    Adani on life-support….Finally. 😝

  • Henry Donald J Blofeld says:

    More “sound” advice from a faint echo from the past, Mr Insider as we read that ex-ousted PM Tony Abbott “advises” new PM Morrison to sharpen the political contest with Labor ahead of the election by moving to lift the prohibition on nuclear power, as Bill Shorten leaves the door open to reviving the now “dead” national energy guarantee.
    Good grief Abbott that is the last thing this “dead in the water” PM would want to do now.
    Abbott only a few days ago was called “useless” at a preselection meeting in his seat of Warringah.

  • jack says:

    one always thinks this might be the big Typhoon, but maybe this is it.

    I have never seen the locals prepare quite like this.

    The building site next door where they are still driving piles usually has a dozen or so steel piles waiting to be driven, nothing above ground level, and they have spent two days tying everything down.

    shops with tape on windows, all very serious, Marks and Spencer looks like a plague of locusts have been through.

    interesting, T8 about 1 am we think, T10 in the morning,

    will let you know

    cheers

    • Jack The Insider says:

      Stay well, mate. As you say, looks like this will be a biggie.

      • jack says:

        this one is the real deal alright, ferocious winds, heavy rain.

        ok here, windows leaking but holding, a mate a hundred metres further up has lost a window and his building is swaying a fair bit, he only moved in yesterday.

        absolutely nothing moving outside, no racing today, casinos in Macau closed.

        lets face it, if you can’t get a bet on in HK it’s serious.

        • Jack The Insider says:

          I’m hearing from other HKers the worst has past. Hope that’s the case. Just saw some footage from around lunchtime our time and it looked terrifying.

          • jack says:

            yeah, back to a T8 now, and the trucks and chainsaws are out picking up fallen limbs and re-opening roads.

            Lots of windows popped, even in grade 1 commercial properties in central, huge storm surge, it crashed through the windows and into the lobby of the intercon on kowloon side, five ferry terminals damaged, etc.

            have never seen the HK streets so empty, it was the scariest weather i have lived through.

            we got a fair dinkum pounding.

            • Jack The Insider says:

              Glad to hear you got through it. My sister in law at Clearwater Bay had a tree uprooted just next to their ground floor property. Luckily it crashed to the ground without any damage. She figured she was in a good spot, a bit secluded from the worst of it. A mate, Peter Ritchie, sent videos of the storm. They looked terrifying. windows on high rises crashing out and some very wet apartments. He was ok. Just wet and windy. A bit of that rain around eastern Australia wouldn’t go astray just quietly.

              • Razor says:

                They don’t close their windows in Nth Qld unless it’s a cat 3!

                All jokes aside its a crazy experience. 2 to my name and could probably claim Hamish. The sound is the thing. I remember Wanda as a kid. The noise was nuts and it wasn’t a big one! Since Mrs Razor and me have shacked up that’s the 1.5 . We’ve always been campers so didn’t make much difference, we had gear. Total electricity outage all 2.5 combined 1 day at the most!

    • Trivalve says:

      Good luck with that Jack. And, perversely,…enjoy! I’ve been on the edge of a couple of cyclones but never the guts. Would like to experience it at least once.

      • jack says:

        TV, it certainly was an experience I will remember.

        What fixed most in my mind was the ferocity and power of it all, beyond anything I had ever seen or heard.

        You can see why the ancients were easily convinced that such events were the work of a wrathful god.

        A lot of damage visible now, hundreds of wonderful old trees, the kids playground just below us has three fifteen meter plus trees lying among the kids swings and slides, another six or seven trees down as well and limbs off everything else.

        We certainly got a good dose this time, in Mid Levels we sometimes get an easy ride, protected from the worst in the lee of the Peak, not this time.

        Photos arriving all morning, everyone in the neighborhood seems to have a huge old tree down next door or at the office, this is an old area for HK, a mix of apartment blocks and schools from the 50s to today scattered around a synagogue, cathedral and mosque all dating back to the Victorian era, so we did have a lot of lovely old trees.

        Amazing lack of casualties considering the damage, folks did respect what was happening and bunker down.

    • Dwight says:

      Tie yourself to something heavy, like a barrel of scotch.

      Seriously though, stay safe.

    • Milton says:

      Did you get an old fashioned blackout, Jack?

  • Dwight says:

    During a basketball game I once called a technical foul on my cousin, the head coach, for insulting the ref. He was the one who insisted I get certified as a ref. The disputed call was borderline. It was mine to make it, it was his to dispute it. But, he crossed the line and called me a name.
    It’s why I had the whistle.
    Doesn’t matter what happens in the game, the ref is in charge.

  • Henry Donald J Blofeld says:

    Excellent “Nicknames” Blog your other one Mr. Insider, poor Morrison he’s trying so hard but as you say hes pushing s#$t uphill hence “Barrows”.
    Not so much a Nickname but a Tag for ex ousted vengeful PM Tony Abbott is the “Whirling Dervish” so named going back to his uni Boxing days when in the 3 fights he had and won he came out arms flailing like a madman.
    Not much has changed for Tony really.

  • Boadicea says:

    BELLA: Interesting that the Dept of Primary Industries is stone-walling FOI requests re the death of the polo ponies. Legal proceedings pending. For goodness sake they died from a cause. Nothing will change that. One would have thought the responsibility for the deaths was the legal issue.
    Ridiculous. If I had a horse and wanted to bring it over on the ferry I would want to know what the risk is!

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