Don't Mention the Racism!

Especially, don't mention how the WNBA's big Olympic opportunity was short-circuited by its racist heterophobia toward Caitlin Clark, the league's only superstar ever.

This should have been women’s basketball’s big year.

Paris, probably one of the two most famous cities in the world along with New York, proved, unsurprisingly, a fine setting for the Olympics, with high TV ratings in America, almost double the covid-crippled 2021 Tokyo Olympics held in empty stadiums.

And, American fans like rooting, periodically, for U.S. national women’s teams to put foreigners in their rightful places and show the world who is best. (On the other hand, there’s not much evidence that fans will ever get excited about women pro team athletes as their city’s Defenders of the Turf, the way fans seem to imagine each one of their home team’s hired gun male athletes as their “brave Horatius, the Captain of the gate.”)

Instead, fan interest in women’s sports seems to be highest when a handful of superstars of contrasting personality do battle, as in women’s tennis going back all the way to Billie Jean King vs. Chrissie Evert vs. Martina Navratilova or in figure skating with Nancy Kerrigan vs. Tonya Harding.

In reality, the WNBA exists less because of organic demand for women’s pro basketball teams than because the vastly rich NBA subsidizes the WNBA to buy off organized feminism from complaining too much when NBA players do something bad to the (many) women in their lives, as they have been known to be sometimes wont to do. (You’ll notice the NBA slid through the Me-Too Era with hardly a peep.)

But put on a USA Girls vs. Foreigner Women show every four years and you can get good ratings, especially if you have a new superstar.