Bigots Would Prefer If Caitlin Clark Quietly Remain WNBA’s Elvis Presley But She Won’t Play Ball
Megyn Kelly is offended!
Caitlin Clark, star point guard on the Indiana Fever, was just named Time magazine’s Athlete of the Year. This should delight her fans in MAGA World, who’ve seen her as their great white hope. (Time is also naming Donald Trump its Person of the Year. He received that honor in 2016, as well, when he was just a morally repulsive reality TV star and not yet a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist.)
Blaze sports columnist Jason Whitlock has described Clark as a “modern-day Jackie Robinson,” although Clark hasn’t received death threats or been singled out for abuse from other players. Clark probably also has no problem sleeping in the same hotels as other players. Even if Clark’s name were “Jackie Robinson,” she’d have little in common with the history-making baseball player. Whitlock should’ve gone with Larry Bird, who’s also white and at least played the same sport.
However, Clark has apparently disappointed MAGA, just like childless cat lady traitor Taylor Swift.
“I want to say I’ve earned every single thing, but as a white person, there is privilege,” Clark told Time. “A lot of those players in the league that have been really good have been Black players. This league has kind of been built on them. The more we can appreciate that, highlight that, talk about that, and then continue to have brands and companies invest in those players that have made this league incredible, I think it’s very important. I have to continue to try to change that. The more we can elevate Black women, that’s going to be a beautiful thing.”
Of course, Clark’s comments disgusted white Santa Claus purist Megyn Kelly, who apparently scours the Internet to find something to complain about. If Democrats had just won the trifecta, I’d probably still have Kool & the Gang’s “Celebration” blasting through my Sonos. Republicans prevailed thanks to classic American deceit and treachery, but Kelly’s still just as miserable as ever.
“Look at this,” she exclaimed on the site that’s not Bluesky. “She’s on the knee all but apologizing for being white and getting attention. The self-flagellation. The ‘oh pls pay attention to the black players who are REALY (sic) the ones you want to celebrate.’ Condescending. Fake. Transparent. Sad.”
Clark never once apologized for her race and success. She just puts her fame in a larger context. Kelly and other right-wingers have baselessly claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson owe their positions to “DEI,” as if it’s somehow easier to succeed if you’re a Black woman, but they recoil at Clark’s admission that her race has provided her any structural advantage.
Las Vegas Aces player A’ja Wilson, from my home state of South Carolina, is a three time WNBA MVP and two-time league champion, but you probably never heard of her before this paragraph. She’s stated, without rancor, that she believes Clark’s whiteness is a “huge” contributor to her popularity.
“It doesn’t matter what we all do as Black women, we’re still going to be swept underneath the rug,” Wilson said. “That’s why it boils my blood when people say it’s not about race because it is.”
“In a sport dominated by Black/African-American players, white America has rallied around Caitlin Clark,” Clark’s former teammate Temi Fagbenle told Time. “The support looks mostly amazing, sometimes fanatical and territorial, sometimes racist. It seems that the great white hope syndrome is at play again.”
A quick Internet search bolsters Fagbenle’s argument, and Clark probably can’t help noticing how her supposed “fans” compare her to other, Black WNBA stars, including Brittney Griner. Misogynoir and transphobia are too often a common mix. MAGA’s appalled that Clark would let her conscience rain on the parade America has bestowed her.
Saturday Night Live’s Michael Che regularly mocked women’s basketball on the show, and Clark roasted him in an April Weekend Update segment. Admirably, Clark rejected any sort of white savior narrative regarding her impact on women’s basketball. She took a moment to praise past Black WNBA stars Lisa Leslie, Sheryl Swoopes, Cynthia Cooper, Staley, and Maya Moore, one of her personal heroes. These women never received Clark’s level of fame, but not because they lacked talent. (Watch below.)
No one doubts that this particular white lady can jump, but Clark’s salary was just one percent of her 2024 earnings. She raked in $11 million from deals with Nike, Gatorade, State Farm, Wilson, Hy-Vee, Xfinity, Gainbridge, Lilly and Panini. Endorsement deals don’t always reflect talent so much as marketability. Clark sells out arenas, and suddenly, America has discovered women’s basketball! A New York Times article in May proclaimed, “Caitlin Clark Is Here. Can the Business of the W.N.B.A. Flourish? Clark’s arrival has many betting on the W.N.B.A.’s success.”
Clark could easily take all the credit for America’s “discovery” of women’s basketball, like a hoops-shooting Columbus. Yet, she dares confront societal biases, even when she directly benefits.
Right-wingers seem incapable of processing the notion that a white person might have some personal regard for minorities that isn’t all some “woke” pretense. Kelly would freak out to learn that jazz legend Dave Brubeck had expressed similar sentiments when he appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1954, an honor he believed his friend Duke Ellington deserved more.
Duke and I were on tour together across the country and this night, we were in Denver. ... And at seven o'clock in the morning, there was a knock on my door, and I opened the door, and there's Duke, and he said, 'You're on the cover of Time.' And he handed me Time magazine. It was the worst and the best moment possible, all mixed up, because I didn't want to have my story come first. I was so hoping that they would do Duke first, because I idolized him. He was so much more important than I was ... he deserved to be first.
In February, Clark set the new NCAA Division 1 women’s basketball scoring record. Just a few weeks later, she became the top scorer overall when she broke Hall of Famer Pete Maravich’s scoring record. Brubeck gave us Time Out, considered one of the best jazz albums ever recorded. (“Pick Up Sticks” is one of my favorite songs.) Their objective talent doesn’t mean they still didn’t benefit from a racist society inclined to elevate white talent.
Megyn Kelly thinks that even recognizing this reality is “self-flagellation,” intended to curry favor from people Kelly loathes. Kelly knows that if she were in Clark’s position, she wouldn’t stop to look back as she climbs the ladder of success. She can’t comprehend that Clark’s humanity might genuinely exceed her talent.
It takes emotional maturity to both own your success (she’s objectively talented) and also recognize that you have a certain privilege based on the color of your skin.
Megyn Kelley would be Candace Owens if she wasn’t white. Still an asshole but far less known.
so Clark's famous and names and elevates her heros and people that inspired her to play...
... and this pisses off The White Wicked Witch of the West.
This is fine.