Let's file this away for the next time someone claims that DEImania aka Sacred White Guilt is just about money and/or corporate profit streams—anyone who says this must not know any upscale white liberals.
Group morality and the sacred totem pole/fetish object that the group gathers around is worth more than just about anything (up to and including your life) and if anyone's tempted to step out of line, the threat of being socially demonized and ostracised will make them think twice (and usually capitulate).
The White Guilt faith is founded on the Achilles' Heel of the white liberal—the absolute existential terror they feel about either being branded a bigot or being seen as bigot-adjacent aka resembling anything or anyone remotely "conservative".
White liberals will agree to almost any humiliation, will leave billion-dollar-bills lying around, will wash black feet and bow their heads in a Struggle Session, will denounce themselves, their families and countries—anything to not have to leave the house in the morning with the Scarlet Letter R branded on their faces.
Clever Pseudonym is talking about how far corporations are willing to go to signal their commitment to DIE, which in many cases now far exceeds the requirements of DOJ dictates, or any other rational pursuit of legality or economic benefit. It certainly does in this WNBA/Nike case.
Money talks, but it doesn't say everything. Greed isn't the only influence on human behavior.
It might. Oh, the stated reason will be something like "discrimination against minorities", but bringing out a Clark shoe might just be the thing that pushes the DOJ over the edge.
It may not be a case of every corporate executive being a White Guilt Liberal. Steve quoted an earlier Ethan Strauss article where Strauss described the mechanism whereby executive inadvertently wokify their companies.
> "They [the executives] aren’t, by and large, ideological. Very few are messianically devoted to seeing the world through the intersectionality lens. They are, however, terrified of their employees who feel this way. The mid-tier labor force, this cohort who actually internalized their university teachings, are full of fervor and willing to risk burned bridges in favor of causes they deem righteous. The big bosses just don’t want a headline-making walkout on their hands, so they placate and mollify, eventually bending the company’s voice into language of righteousness.
In 2018, a New York Times article detailed the middle-up 'revolt' within Nike, driven by women who had enough of an 'environment that had turned toxic.'"
This description fits facts pretty well, not just for Nike, but for the media, the Democratic party, academia, etc.
Of course the question is why do executives continue to employ these middle managers who terrify them? The answer, I think, is that these middle managers are the DEI hires that the Feds compel them to employ, so the execs can't easily get rid of them without running afoul of the DOJ and the Plaintiff's Bar.
tl;dr: Caitlin Clark's billion dollar bill lying perpetually on the pavement is just another casualty of Liberal Theology, which has the state power to terrify even powerful non-believers.
I want to add one more aspect here: these execs are mostly male, which means most likely they have wives, daughters, sisters, who are the Church Ladies of the SJW faith, always on the hunt for ideological infractions, loudly denouncing someone or something 365 days a year, and all day at Thanksgiving dinner.
I guess my point is that the social pressure is relentless and inescapable, at least for anyone who works in anything prestigious, anything remotely involving culture or politics, and/or that requires hiring Humanities grads under age 40.
The Cultural Revolution never sleeps or takes a day off, at least in our upscale urban centers and college towns, and if you know (even just in the back of your mind) that somewhere nearby lurks a hive of Furies waiting to destroy you for crimes against the One True Faith, most of us will make sure to color within the approved lines. Why risk losing your career and/or family?
The mechanism is the curiosity that a bunch of industries whose business does not innately "require hiring Humanities grads under age 40" end up hiring boatloads of Humanities grads under age 40 anyway to appease the [anti-]Civil Rights laws [sic].
Just as the antebellum South had its "peculiar institution" (slavery), the post-WWII West has its own "peculiar institution" (the woke nanny state), both of which institutions future generations will look back on with bewilderment, horror, and pity.
Since I'm an Iowan, I've set aside my scruples this year in the name of tribal loyalty, and have, in a cursory fashion, followed CC's progress in the WNBA. It's been eye-opening. CC is, by a vast measure, the best thing that's ever happened to women's pro sports in the USA. But she has been treated like an invasive virus by the league, and to some degree by the sports press.
CC has been battered by flagrant fouls -- outright assaults, in several cases -- that go unnoticed by refs, or that are called as simple fouls only. She's been punched, pushed down, tripped -- and just this week got poked directly in the eye by an opponent's paste-on nail talon. No foul called, of course.
She's also been the subject of a not-quite-subtle-enough hate campaign at ESPN, the preeminent American sports media presence. ESPN ranked Clark as only the second-best rookie in the WNBA nearly all season. Although CC played remarkably well (e.g. she set the league season record for assists) ESPN dreamed up a bizarre ranking algorithm that kept CC down behind Angel Reese, a suitably loud, black, and proud rookie who grabbed rebounds, and did almost nothing else of value. Clark was finally declared the top rookie in this farce in the last week of the season, but only because ESPN's preferred choice Reese was injured.
The ugliest facet of the Hatin' Caitlin campaign has been a collaborative effort from WNBA players, league officials, former WNBA stars, and sports media commentators to keep charges of racism constantly at the forefront of Clark's first WNBA season. We're not talking about the naked, brutal black-on-white racism that Clark's been subjected to -- of course not. Instead, every time an on-court black thug has assaulted Clark, there's been a concerted push to claim that 'fans of Clark' are subjecting the poor black girl who was only 'making a basketball play' to racist abuse on social media. Clark herself has been coerced into kowtowing and playing an approved 'white ally' role in this grotesque charade. It's hard to get your head around this -- when Clark has just been beaten up on the court, she has then been pushed in media interviews to declare that she is 'on side' and 'standing with' her attackers in protecting them from her (i.e. Clark's) own horribly racist supporters.
What I'm trying to say is that the 'better conditions' of which you speak may never come to pass. As Clever Pseudonym has astutely noted above, this WNBA season is Exhibit 1 in exposing how profit is not the primary driver of woke corporatism in 2024 USA. Something bigger, deeper, and much more evil is operating barely beneath the surface -- although these days glimpses of its true nature break through more and more often, like one of Lovecraft's ancient monsters . . . .
Fantastic summary. I think it's quite likely the failure to capitalize on CC because we mustn't make blacks unhappy is going to be the prime factor in WNBA popularity declining to irrelevance in 3-5 years, more quickly if Clark suffers a career ending injury.
It is yet another useful reminder that there are elements of our society that it's no use making any accommodation for whatsoever.
“profit is not the primary driver of woke corporatism in 2024 USA. Something bigger, deeper, and much more evil is operating barely beneath the surface -- “
Thank you for articulating something I have been viscerally feeling since mid 2020. I couldn’t put it into words exactly other than just anti-white racism which doesn’t even begin to capture this malevolent force.
Are you familiar with C S Lewis? I recommend reading his wonderfully weird, prescient, and increasingly disquieting sci-fi + fantasy + spiritual warfare mashup novel *That Hideous Strength*. It's the third in a trilogy, but each of the three novels is quite distinct, and you wouldn't be missing too much if you just read the final installment.
To think that Britain used to be peopled by the likes of CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, James Herriot, Malcolm Muggeridge, Enoch Powell. Lewis would say his country has succumbed.
No kidding. I occasionally went to the pub that Lewis and Tolkien liked to meet up at - the Eagle and Child aka The Bird and Baby - just because I thought it was a cool civilizational touchstone. Unfortunately it shut down for good a couple of years ago.
As a non-American with little interest in basketball I can off the top of my head name only half-a-dozen active NBA players.
The only WNBA player I’d heard of was Britney Griner due to her arrest in 2022.
But Clark is an absolute phenomenon and already the second-best known sportswoman in the world after Simone Biles. The treatment she has got from the 🏀 establishment (not being picked for the Olympics, no shoe, abuse from other players) is truly bizarre.
It’s a bit like watching a strange episode at the Vatican and realising that there is an internal logic which is clear to the global celibate male elite who run the Catholic church, but that no one else will ever fathom.
Sometimes, people really ARE that stupid. Although one would think Nike of all corporations, would know when to not care about what certain people think.
Do women/girls buy all that many basketball shoes? Would black women buy Caitlins? Would men buy Caitlins?
A year or two ago, I saw a cardboard cutout of Clark in my local supermarket, and I thought, “Do they really think they can make a celebrity out of her?” Now I think she really is a celebrity. I bet a lot of people would buy Caitlin shoes: women, girls, men, black, white, other. But what do I know?
Nike knows that their customer base is black people. They make more money from white people, but white people gonna wear whatever black people wear. And, black people will refuse to wear Caitlin Clark shoes.
Nike? The same people who decided that hiring America-hating, white-hating mediocre QB COlin Kapernick as a spokesman after he started spitting on the flag? Nike has a history of picking up names for political reasons, Clark the female basketball player is another (because no one watches women's basketball). Nike is woke trash, and like all woke trash its ESG score needs to be maintained, even if it means paying a female basketball player for shoes it will never make.
Nike is also just doing what the NBA commands. The NBA has to subsidize the WNBA to keep feminists groups at bay, and Nike needs access to the NBA players. So the NBA is making Nike subsidize Clark like they subsidize the WNBA .
Very likely, a Caitlin Clark shoe wouldn't sell that well. She's not that big, Steve; all this hype about her is just a push to try to bring the WNBA up a level, which it can't do because it sucks. What is more, Nike sells athletic shoes to men, to a far lesser extent, athletic women. Non-basketball girls ain't going to buy Clark's shoes, and men sure ain't. So her market is the tiny fraction of girls who watch the WNBA and play the sport fiercely.
So Nike just took in Clark as a cost of doing business. They need the ESG score and the celebration of women's basketball and the access to the NBA's male stars, so its paying Clark to get that. Making shoes for her would contribute to their losses, so why bother hustling them out?
Neither do you. You seem to think women will buy athletic shoes en masse when they endorsed by famous female athletes. Outside of the small group of females already playing said sport with an eye towards getting better rather than being pretty, women as a whole are not like men in this regard.
EDIT: When has the opposite ever been true? When have women flocked en masse to buy an athletic shoe endorsed by a female athlete?
Serena Williams was out earning the Men's Number One from branding, including shoes deals, even the year after she retired.
Walk into any Nike branded shop and you'll see plenty of women buying those goods.
The fact is that women's sports are popular, given that they operate in the same way disability leagues do, by excluding all of the world's most capable athletes, based on biology/physiology, so that much less capable athletes can win.
Basically, people, especially women, do actually often like seeing women win at sports and will buy stuff associated with it. It isn't fake. Nor is it surprising.
> Very likely, a Caitlin Clark shoe wouldn't sell that well. She's not that big, Steve; all this hype about her is just a push to try to bring the WNBA up a level, which it can't do because it sucks
This may be the dumbest thing I have read on SubStack
I was at a wedding with relatives from Arizona, Indiana, New York, and California last month and when the talk turned to sports literally everyone was talking about Clark. I have a daughter that plays basketball and she had no idea who A'Ja Wilson is - a multi-MVP and the player Nike has a shoe campaign for - and when looking at her display at Dick's opted for Kyrie Irving shoes instead. If there had been a Clark option I am sure she would have picked those out.
As I indicated in an earlier comment, I think the interest in the WNBA is likely to flame out, and not monetizing obvious opportunities like this will be a big part. When that happens there will be a bunch of caterwauling about how America doesn't respect or admire the black women that make up the core of the sport - and that is actually entirely correct.
A flash in the pan media hyped to the heavens isn't going to make the WNBA any more legit. In the end she's just a female basketball player-- worse than any man playing in the NBA and 90% of the men playing in college and on Euroclub teams.
The point is that Clark is marketable and Nike and the WNBA would make a lot of money by riding this hype train as long as they can. Instead they basically defer to the sensibilities of black lesbians that are hugely offended that the public is far more interested in a white straight upper middle class woman than them.
I have repeatedly said I think the WNBA will sink back to its pre-Clark level of interest eventually, but it will likely come a lot sooner than could be the case thanks to the issue mentioned in my first paragraph.
I don't think that Clark is all that marketable and I don't think the money is there. I think Clark's push is based on media-hype and nothing more. I think Nike has done the market research and realized Clark wouldn't move the needle on shoes so no use wasting the money on it. They aren't leaving billions on the table, Nike isn't mistaken. Clark is a political stunt by Nike, not a business one.
Clark reminds me of a pro-wrestler getting a massive push early only but without the fan support. Despite the hype, their merchandise won't sell. They end up flaming out, getting booed, and costing the company money if they have them main event a PPV.
During her senior year in college, Clark was making more money from NIL that all but one college football player. And Clark was famous well before Nike entered the picture.
I suspect you are not one of the sports dads with a daughter Steve has referenced. Frankly if she is all hype, then the marketing campaign that is promoting her ought to be studied and replicated for its success given WNBA in person attendance and TV numbers this season, as well as jersey sales.
They’re probably not leaving that much money on the table. Unlike men’s basketball shoes, women don’t wear them off-court as a fashion statement. So your market for Kaitlin 1s is… white, lady basketball players. And Nike already dominates the women’s basketball shoe market. They might sell a fair number of Kaitlin 1s, but almost certainly they’d sell precisely the same number fewer Sabrina 1s or Luka 1s or any of their other popular lines. And like all other sports, women’s basketball has markedly fewer amateur participants than men’s.
None of this is to ignore the clear racial and political aspect of what’s going on with Ms Clark. It’s obvious and infuriating anti-white discrimination (welcome to modern America!). But solely as a business question, I suspect their policy here is a rounding error to results.
A follow-up here that further illustrates what Caitlin Clark was facing in her first WNBA season.
Clark's team, the Indiana Fever, made the playoffs, improving greatly from their past few seasons, mostly because of Clark, but they lost their opening series to the higher-seeded Connecticut Sun. Okay, seems quite straightforward.
But here, so far as I can glean from a variety of sources, is what Clark faced in those two games. It's hard to get straightforward accounts of these incidents because major sports media sources --- especially ESPN -- are working so hard to hide or obfuscate them.
In the first game, Clark was poked in the eye by a black lesbian Connecticut player named DiJonai Carrington. No foul was called.
In the second game, Clark was undercut as she tried to land after shooting a jump shot by a black lesbian Connecticut player named DeWanna Bonner. Normally this would be an automatic flagrant foul, but no foul of any sort was called.
Bad enough. But there was much more going on off-court. DeWanna Bonner's lesbian 'fiancée' (or would they prefer fiancé?) is her Connecticut teammate Alyssa Thomas. Thomas, all season long, and especially in the past few days, has been in the news for accusing Caitlin Clark and her fans of being racists.
So what does ESPN focus on? Well, it turns out they made a big deal of Bonner and Thomas's engagement in the broadcasts of these games. To wit, one of their play-by-play announcers was saying things like 'Bonner to her fiancée for the 2!' What ESPN wants to promote is pretty clear.
Now, one more little twist. You remember Connecticut Sun player DiJonai Carrington, she of the poky fingers in Game 1? She has also spent much of the season tweeting about how horrible Caitlin and her awful heterosexual whiteness are. Well, it turns out that DiJonai's lesbian girlfriend is Caitlin Clark's Indiana teammate NaLyssa Smith. Smith has been on X as well (as if that needed to be said at this point) whining that her poor sweet girlfriend DiJonai was being victimized by her (Smith's) own team's racist fans who were mad just because DiJonai poked Caitlin in the eye. It's also pretty clear where NaLyssa Smith's loyalties lie.
Okay, that's enough to try to keep straight. I'm sure you all get the bigger picture: Caitlin Clark has been trying to play her game in the face of vicious opposition from her league's power structure, including opposing players, coaches, and referees, and even her own teammates; she's had ESPN and the other mainstream press gunning for her and promoting her rivals at every opportunity; she's been dealing with constant vague -- but in her world, very real and dangerous -- accusations of racism; and she's almost completely kept above all of this roiling mess and maintained both the quality of her game and her dignity.
Giant business entities like Nike are coasting on cash flow, financialization and legacy IP. The people who make up the corporation (a fictitious entity) can indulge in all sorts of religious derangement. As Adam Smith might say, there's a lot of ruin in a corporation. How is Boeing still a going concern?
Corporations--which is to say, people--will poke their own eyes out over matters of religion.
Boeing survive because there are two manufacturers of mid and wide body commercial aircraft and both companies have an order list that will take years to fill. The barrier to creating a new manufacturer of intercontinental capable commercial aircraft is so high that no set of investors will ever fund it.
Any idea in rough quantitative terms how much difference between men's vs women's basketball shoe market? I would guess it would be at least an order or magnitude or more, so the profits to be made off Ms. Clark's shoe may not justify the manufacturing, marketing, and reverse racism costs that would accrue to Nike.
Good observations. Steve is right that there is a largely-untapped market of schoolgirls (mostly white, surely) around the country whose dads would be delighted to see them rocking CC shoes. Clark has a bit of temper on court, but on the whole she is a remarkably wholesome role model.
But Nike would have to be calculating the black-shoe-buyer market hit they would take from ESPN, black influencers on social media, maybe some snide remarks from big-name black athletes, and so on, if they produced a Caitlin Clark shoe line -- instead of one featuring Angel Reese or some other black 'superstar'.
Nike is probably more worried that whatever competitors they have left would try to steal current talent or sign new talent away from Nike by mentioning that Nike tolerates and supports racism.
It's a perfectly sensible question. We know perfectly well that the WNBA is an exercise in virtue signaling by the NBA and there is no obvious reason to think that it's different for Nike. How about posting a link instead of a baseless assertion?
It's quite a piece of work. It's written by some kind of queer trans something-or-other sportswriter who felt 'unsafe' at a game in which Caitlin Clark was playing, because Clark's fans seemed to be on the verge of rioting in the name of pure white supremacy, or something along those lines.
The article's author is also pushing hard to pin a scarlet R for Racist on Clark herself, with passive-aggressive stuff like this:
"It’s not fair that the media and a segment of her fan base are forcing Clark to be an avatar for white supremacy, but she’s going to have to actively push back. If her Black colleagues are being affected by the racism and misogynoir and she chooses silence, she’s choosing to take advantage of the fact that she can check out of dealing with it while they can’t."
So Clark is already an (inadvertent) 'avatar for white supremacy', and she's not doing enough to 'actively push back' against it. It's nasty, mean-spirited, borderline libelous stuff.
Very interesting article about someone looking for umbrage. I really can't keep track of the gender switching without a scorecard, particularly when the author says, "..My partner and I are both queer and trans". Does that mean she was a he who likes guys and the partner is a he who was a she and likes girls? My salacious inner self wants to know about the genital plumbing and any surgeries performed thereon!
Let's file this away for the next time someone claims that DEImania aka Sacred White Guilt is just about money and/or corporate profit streams—anyone who says this must not know any upscale white liberals.
Group morality and the sacred totem pole/fetish object that the group gathers around is worth more than just about anything (up to and including your life) and if anyone's tempted to step out of line, the threat of being socially demonized and ostracised will make them think twice (and usually capitulate).
The White Guilt faith is founded on the Achilles' Heel of the white liberal—the absolute existential terror they feel about either being branded a bigot or being seen as bigot-adjacent aka resembling anything or anyone remotely "conservative".
White liberals will agree to almost any humiliation, will leave billion-dollar-bills lying around, will wash black feet and bow their heads in a Struggle Session, will denounce themselves, their families and countries—anything to not have to leave the house in the morning with the Scarlet Letter R branded on their faces.
And people say America is secular! lol
> Let's file this away for the next time someone claims that DEImania aka Sacred White Guilt is just about money and/or corporate profit streams
Well, you see having the DOJ on your back is bad for profits.
Clever Pseudonym is talking about how far corporations are willing to go to signal their commitment to DIE, which in many cases now far exceeds the requirements of DOJ dictates, or any other rational pursuit of legality or economic benefit. It certainly does in this WNBA/Nike case.
Money talks, but it doesn't say everything. Greed isn't the only influence on human behavior.
The Obama DOJ forced companies to hire a bunch of DIE commissars, who are now pushing this stuff.
Also, the DOJ will semi-randomly go after the least DIE companies leading to a DIE signaling spiral.
What are you talking about? The DOJ is not going to get on Nike's case if Nike brings out a Clark shoe.
It might. Oh, the stated reason will be something like "discrimination against minorities", but bringing out a Clark shoe might just be the thing that pushes the DOJ over the edge.
Utter nonsense.
It may not be a case of every corporate executive being a White Guilt Liberal. Steve quoted an earlier Ethan Strauss article where Strauss described the mechanism whereby executive inadvertently wokify their companies.
> "They [the executives] aren’t, by and large, ideological. Very few are messianically devoted to seeing the world through the intersectionality lens. They are, however, terrified of their employees who feel this way. The mid-tier labor force, this cohort who actually internalized their university teachings, are full of fervor and willing to risk burned bridges in favor of causes they deem righteous. The big bosses just don’t want a headline-making walkout on their hands, so they placate and mollify, eventually bending the company’s voice into language of righteousness.
In 2018, a New York Times article detailed the middle-up 'revolt' within Nike, driven by women who had enough of an 'environment that had turned toxic.'"
https://www.unz.com/isteve/why-nike-no-longer-wants-us-to-be-like-mike
This description fits facts pretty well, not just for Nike, but for the media, the Democratic party, academia, etc.
Of course the question is why do executives continue to employ these middle managers who terrify them? The answer, I think, is that these middle managers are the DEI hires that the Feds compel them to employ, so the execs can't easily get rid of them without running afoul of the DOJ and the Plaintiff's Bar.
tl;dr: Caitlin Clark's billion dollar bill lying perpetually on the pavement is just another casualty of Liberal Theology, which has the state power to terrify even powerful non-believers.
I want to add one more aspect here: these execs are mostly male, which means most likely they have wives, daughters, sisters, who are the Church Ladies of the SJW faith, always on the hunt for ideological infractions, loudly denouncing someone or something 365 days a year, and all day at Thanksgiving dinner.
I guess my point is that the social pressure is relentless and inescapable, at least for anyone who works in anything prestigious, anything remotely involving culture or politics, and/or that requires hiring Humanities grads under age 40.
The Cultural Revolution never sleeps or takes a day off, at least in our upscale urban centers and college towns, and if you know (even just in the back of your mind) that somewhere nearby lurks a hive of Furies waiting to destroy you for crimes against the One True Faith, most of us will make sure to color within the approved lines. Why risk losing your career and/or family?
Yes, I agree.
The mechanism is the curiosity that a bunch of industries whose business does not innately "require hiring Humanities grads under age 40" end up hiring boatloads of Humanities grads under age 40 anyway to appease the [anti-]Civil Rights laws [sic].
Just as the antebellum South had its "peculiar institution" (slavery), the post-WWII West has its own "peculiar institution" (the woke nanny state), both of which institutions future generations will look back on with bewilderment, horror, and pity.
Why did she agree to extend the contract without better conditions? Dumb agent.
There might be nothing better on offer for her.
Since I'm an Iowan, I've set aside my scruples this year in the name of tribal loyalty, and have, in a cursory fashion, followed CC's progress in the WNBA. It's been eye-opening. CC is, by a vast measure, the best thing that's ever happened to women's pro sports in the USA. But she has been treated like an invasive virus by the league, and to some degree by the sports press.
CC has been battered by flagrant fouls -- outright assaults, in several cases -- that go unnoticed by refs, or that are called as simple fouls only. She's been punched, pushed down, tripped -- and just this week got poked directly in the eye by an opponent's paste-on nail talon. No foul called, of course.
She's also been the subject of a not-quite-subtle-enough hate campaign at ESPN, the preeminent American sports media presence. ESPN ranked Clark as only the second-best rookie in the WNBA nearly all season. Although CC played remarkably well (e.g. she set the league season record for assists) ESPN dreamed up a bizarre ranking algorithm that kept CC down behind Angel Reese, a suitably loud, black, and proud rookie who grabbed rebounds, and did almost nothing else of value. Clark was finally declared the top rookie in this farce in the last week of the season, but only because ESPN's preferred choice Reese was injured.
The ugliest facet of the Hatin' Caitlin campaign has been a collaborative effort from WNBA players, league officials, former WNBA stars, and sports media commentators to keep charges of racism constantly at the forefront of Clark's first WNBA season. We're not talking about the naked, brutal black-on-white racism that Clark's been subjected to -- of course not. Instead, every time an on-court black thug has assaulted Clark, there's been a concerted push to claim that 'fans of Clark' are subjecting the poor black girl who was only 'making a basketball play' to racist abuse on social media. Clark herself has been coerced into kowtowing and playing an approved 'white ally' role in this grotesque charade. It's hard to get your head around this -- when Clark has just been beaten up on the court, she has then been pushed in media interviews to declare that she is 'on side' and 'standing with' her attackers in protecting them from her (i.e. Clark's) own horribly racist supporters.
What I'm trying to say is that the 'better conditions' of which you speak may never come to pass. As Clever Pseudonym has astutely noted above, this WNBA season is Exhibit 1 in exposing how profit is not the primary driver of woke corporatism in 2024 USA. Something bigger, deeper, and much more evil is operating barely beneath the surface -- although these days glimpses of its true nature break through more and more often, like one of Lovecraft's ancient monsters . . . .
Fantastic summary. I think it's quite likely the failure to capitalize on CC because we mustn't make blacks unhappy is going to be the prime factor in WNBA popularity declining to irrelevance in 3-5 years, more quickly if Clark suffers a career ending injury.
It is yet another useful reminder that there are elements of our society that it's no use making any accommodation for whatsoever.
> just this week got poked directly in the eye by an opponent's paste-on nail talon.
That the WNBA allows players to wear these in the first place shows they aren't a serious league
“profit is not the primary driver of woke corporatism in 2024 USA. Something bigger, deeper, and much more evil is operating barely beneath the surface -- “
Thank you for articulating something I have been viscerally feeling since mid 2020. I couldn’t put it into words exactly other than just anti-white racism which doesn’t even begin to capture this malevolent force.
Are you familiar with C S Lewis? I recommend reading his wonderfully weird, prescient, and increasingly disquieting sci-fi + fantasy + spiritual warfare mashup novel *That Hideous Strength*. It's the third in a trilogy, but each of the three novels is quite distinct, and you wouldn't be missing too much if you just read the final installment.
To think that Britain used to be peopled by the likes of CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, James Herriot, Malcolm Muggeridge, Enoch Powell. Lewis would say his country has succumbed.
No kidding. I occasionally went to the pub that Lewis and Tolkien liked to meet up at - the Eagle and Child aka The Bird and Baby - just because I thought it was a cool civilizational touchstone. Unfortunately it shut down for good a couple of years ago.
This ranks up with Sears on the level of corporate mismanagement.
As a non-American with little interest in basketball I can off the top of my head name only half-a-dozen active NBA players.
The only WNBA player I’d heard of was Britney Griner due to her arrest in 2022.
But Clark is an absolute phenomenon and already the second-best known sportswoman in the world after Simone Biles. The treatment she has got from the 🏀 establishment (not being picked for the Olympics, no shoe, abuse from other players) is truly bizarre.
It’s a bit like watching a strange episode at the Vatican and realising that there is an internal logic which is clear to the global celibate male elite who run the Catholic church, but that no one else will ever fathom.
I understand Nike's reticence.
Nike knows that even peaceful rational Blacks literally rob & kill each other over gym shoes.
Imagine how much worse it would be if Whites got involved. Nike doesn't want to risk the legal consequences.
WHITE GIRL LIVES MATTER!!!
🤣🤣🤣
Sometimes, people really ARE that stupid. Although one would think Nike of all corporations, would know when to not care about what certain people think.
Do women/girls buy all that many basketball shoes? Would black women buy Caitlins? Would men buy Caitlins?
A year or two ago, I saw a cardboard cutout of Clark in my local supermarket, and I thought, “Do they really think they can make a celebrity out of her?” Now I think she really is a celebrity. I bet a lot of people would buy Caitlin shoes: women, girls, men, black, white, other. But what do I know?
Dads who love sports and have daughters who like sports are ready to shell out huge amounts of money on Caitlin Clark merchandise for their daughters.
She's not just a good role model, she's fun in the way Larry Bird was fun.
Nike knows that their customer base is black people. They make more money from white people, but white people gonna wear whatever black people wear. And, black people will refuse to wear Caitlin Clark shoes.
Nike? The same people who decided that hiring America-hating, white-hating mediocre QB COlin Kapernick as a spokesman after he started spitting on the flag? Nike has a history of picking up names for political reasons, Clark the female basketball player is another (because no one watches women's basketball). Nike is woke trash, and like all woke trash its ESG score needs to be maintained, even if it means paying a female basketball player for shoes it will never make.
Nike is also just doing what the NBA commands. The NBA has to subsidize the WNBA to keep feminists groups at bay, and Nike needs access to the NBA players. So the NBA is making Nike subsidize Clark like they subsidize the WNBA .
Very likely, a Caitlin Clark shoe wouldn't sell that well. She's not that big, Steve; all this hype about her is just a push to try to bring the WNBA up a level, which it can't do because it sucks. What is more, Nike sells athletic shoes to men, to a far lesser extent, athletic women. Non-basketball girls ain't going to buy Clark's shoes, and men sure ain't. So her market is the tiny fraction of girls who watch the WNBA and play the sport fiercely.
So Nike just took in Clark as a cost of doing business. They need the ESG score and the celebration of women's basketball and the access to the NBA's male stars, so its paying Clark to get that. Making shoes for her would contribute to their losses, so why bother hustling them out?
Nike is anti-American trash anyway.
When thinking like a curmudgeon makes you write paragraphs about why women won't buy shoes. Come on man!
When buying into the propaganda makes you forget you're comparing athletic shoes to women's fashion shoes. Come on man!
You do not have potential for a successful career in marketing consumer goods to women. I know this might be a crushing disappointment lol
Neither do you. You seem to think women will buy athletic shoes en masse when they endorsed by famous female athletes. Outside of the small group of females already playing said sport with an eye towards getting better rather than being pretty, women as a whole are not like men in this regard.
EDIT: When has the opposite ever been true? When have women flocked en masse to buy an athletic shoe endorsed by a female athlete?
Serena Williams was out earning the Men's Number One from branding, including shoes deals, even the year after she retired.
Walk into any Nike branded shop and you'll see plenty of women buying those goods.
The fact is that women's sports are popular, given that they operate in the same way disability leagues do, by excluding all of the world's most capable athletes, based on biology/physiology, so that much less capable athletes can win.
Basically, people, especially women, do actually often like seeing women win at sports and will buy stuff associated with it. It isn't fake. Nor is it surprising.
> Very likely, a Caitlin Clark shoe wouldn't sell that well. She's not that big, Steve; all this hype about her is just a push to try to bring the WNBA up a level, which it can't do because it sucks
This may be the dumbest thing I have read on SubStack
I was at a wedding with relatives from Arizona, Indiana, New York, and California last month and when the talk turned to sports literally everyone was talking about Clark. I have a daughter that plays basketball and she had no idea who A'Ja Wilson is - a multi-MVP and the player Nike has a shoe campaign for - and when looking at her display at Dick's opted for Kyrie Irving shoes instead. If there had been a Clark option I am sure she would have picked those out.
As I indicated in an earlier comment, I think the interest in the WNBA is likely to flame out, and not monetizing obvious opportunities like this will be a big part. When that happens there will be a bunch of caterwauling about how America doesn't respect or admire the black women that make up the core of the sport - and that is actually entirely correct.
A flash in the pan media hyped to the heavens isn't going to make the WNBA any more legit. In the end she's just a female basketball player-- worse than any man playing in the NBA and 90% of the men playing in college and on Euroclub teams.
The point is that Clark is marketable and Nike and the WNBA would make a lot of money by riding this hype train as long as they can. Instead they basically defer to the sensibilities of black lesbians that are hugely offended that the public is far more interested in a white straight upper middle class woman than them.
I have repeatedly said I think the WNBA will sink back to its pre-Clark level of interest eventually, but it will likely come a lot sooner than could be the case thanks to the issue mentioned in my first paragraph.
I don't think that Clark is all that marketable and I don't think the money is there. I think Clark's push is based on media-hype and nothing more. I think Nike has done the market research and realized Clark wouldn't move the needle on shoes so no use wasting the money on it. They aren't leaving billions on the table, Nike isn't mistaken. Clark is a political stunt by Nike, not a business one.
Clark reminds me of a pro-wrestler getting a massive push early only but without the fan support. Despite the hype, their merchandise won't sell. They end up flaming out, getting booed, and costing the company money if they have them main event a PPV.
During her senior year in college, Clark was making more money from NIL that all but one college football player. And Clark was famous well before Nike entered the picture.
I suspect you are not one of the sports dads with a daughter Steve has referenced. Frankly if she is all hype, then the marketing campaign that is promoting her ought to be studied and replicated for its success given WNBA in person attendance and TV numbers this season, as well as jersey sales.
They’re probably not leaving that much money on the table. Unlike men’s basketball shoes, women don’t wear them off-court as a fashion statement. So your market for Kaitlin 1s is… white, lady basketball players. And Nike already dominates the women’s basketball shoe market. They might sell a fair number of Kaitlin 1s, but almost certainly they’d sell precisely the same number fewer Sabrina 1s or Luka 1s or any of their other popular lines. And like all other sports, women’s basketball has markedly fewer amateur participants than men’s.
None of this is to ignore the clear racial and political aspect of what’s going on with Ms Clark. It’s obvious and infuriating anti-white discrimination (welcome to modern America!). But solely as a business question, I suspect their policy here is a rounding error to results.
A follow-up here that further illustrates what Caitlin Clark was facing in her first WNBA season.
Clark's team, the Indiana Fever, made the playoffs, improving greatly from their past few seasons, mostly because of Clark, but they lost their opening series to the higher-seeded Connecticut Sun. Okay, seems quite straightforward.
But here, so far as I can glean from a variety of sources, is what Clark faced in those two games. It's hard to get straightforward accounts of these incidents because major sports media sources --- especially ESPN -- are working so hard to hide or obfuscate them.
In the first game, Clark was poked in the eye by a black lesbian Connecticut player named DiJonai Carrington. No foul was called.
In the second game, Clark was undercut as she tried to land after shooting a jump shot by a black lesbian Connecticut player named DeWanna Bonner. Normally this would be an automatic flagrant foul, but no foul of any sort was called.
Bad enough. But there was much more going on off-court. DeWanna Bonner's lesbian 'fiancée' (or would they prefer fiancé?) is her Connecticut teammate Alyssa Thomas. Thomas, all season long, and especially in the past few days, has been in the news for accusing Caitlin Clark and her fans of being racists.
So what does ESPN focus on? Well, it turns out they made a big deal of Bonner and Thomas's engagement in the broadcasts of these games. To wit, one of their play-by-play announcers was saying things like 'Bonner to her fiancée for the 2!' What ESPN wants to promote is pretty clear.
Now, one more little twist. You remember Connecticut Sun player DiJonai Carrington, she of the poky fingers in Game 1? She has also spent much of the season tweeting about how horrible Caitlin and her awful heterosexual whiteness are. Well, it turns out that DiJonai's lesbian girlfriend is Caitlin Clark's Indiana teammate NaLyssa Smith. Smith has been on X as well (as if that needed to be said at this point) whining that her poor sweet girlfriend DiJonai was being victimized by her (Smith's) own team's racist fans who were mad just because DiJonai poked Caitlin in the eye. It's also pretty clear where NaLyssa Smith's loyalties lie.
Okay, that's enough to try to keep straight. I'm sure you all get the bigger picture: Caitlin Clark has been trying to play her game in the face of vicious opposition from her league's power structure, including opposing players, coaches, and referees, and even her own teammates; she's had ESPN and the other mainstream press gunning for her and promoting her rivals at every opportunity; she's been dealing with constant vague -- but in her world, very real and dangerous -- accusations of racism; and she's almost completely kept above all of this roiling mess and maintained both the quality of her game and her dignity.
No surprise that jealous & vicious Blacks would hate a White beating them at their own game.
The in-your-face anti-White racism directed at Caitlin is, at its core, Great Replacement.
Black racists know their place. As long as they don't pull a Kanye or a Kyrie, they're kosher.
Giant business entities like Nike are coasting on cash flow, financialization and legacy IP. The people who make up the corporation (a fictitious entity) can indulge in all sorts of religious derangement. As Adam Smith might say, there's a lot of ruin in a corporation. How is Boeing still a going concern?
Corporations--which is to say, people--will poke their own eyes out over matters of religion.
Boeing survive because there are two manufacturers of mid and wide body commercial aircraft and both companies have an order list that will take years to fill. The barrier to creating a new manufacturer of intercontinental capable commercial aircraft is so high that no set of investors will ever fund it.
Any idea in rough quantitative terms how much difference between men's vs women's basketball shoe market? I would guess it would be at least an order or magnitude or more, so the profits to be made off Ms. Clark's shoe may not justify the manufacturing, marketing, and reverse racism costs that would accrue to Nike.
Good observations. Steve is right that there is a largely-untapped market of schoolgirls (mostly white, surely) around the country whose dads would be delighted to see them rocking CC shoes. Clark has a bit of temper on court, but on the whole she is a remarkably wholesome role model.
But Nike would have to be calculating the black-shoe-buyer market hit they would take from ESPN, black influencers on social media, maybe some snide remarks from big-name black athletes, and so on, if they produced a Caitlin Clark shoe line -- instead of one featuring Angel Reese or some other black 'superstar'.
Nike is probably more worried that whatever competitors they have left would try to steal current talent or sign new talent away from Nike by mentioning that Nike tolerates and supports racism.
Does any of this "talent" make money for Nike?
Yes they do. Look it up instead of posting a passive-aggressive non-question question.
It's a perfectly sensible question. We know perfectly well that the WNBA is an exercise in virtue signaling by the NBA and there is no obvious reason to think that it's different for Nike. How about posting a link instead of a baseless assertion?
This is the kind of thing Nike is likely worried about:
https://andscape.com/features/indiana-fever-connecticut-sun-wnba-racism/
It's quite a piece of work. It's written by some kind of queer trans something-or-other sportswriter who felt 'unsafe' at a game in which Caitlin Clark was playing, because Clark's fans seemed to be on the verge of rioting in the name of pure white supremacy, or something along those lines.
The article's author is also pushing hard to pin a scarlet R for Racist on Clark herself, with passive-aggressive stuff like this:
"It’s not fair that the media and a segment of her fan base are forcing Clark to be an avatar for white supremacy, but she’s going to have to actively push back. If her Black colleagues are being affected by the racism and misogynoir and she chooses silence, she’s choosing to take advantage of the fact that she can check out of dealing with it while they can’t."
So Clark is already an (inadvertent) 'avatar for white supremacy', and she's not doing enough to 'actively push back' against it. It's nasty, mean-spirited, borderline libelous stuff.
Very interesting article about someone looking for umbrage. I really can't keep track of the gender switching without a scorecard, particularly when the author says, "..My partner and I are both queer and trans". Does that mean she was a he who likes guys and the partner is a he who was a she and likes girls? My salacious inner self wants to know about the genital plumbing and any surgeries performed thereon!
you know why
If you listened to these two idiots you'll never get back the brain cells you wasted.