Time for WNBA to end the ongoing embarrassment
It’s not often the owner of a professional sports team takes a photo with a man who is a neo-Nazi and former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, but that’s what Kelly Loeffler did.
The most important part of this story is not the photo, but what happens next. This can be a story of the WNBA, where Loeffler is part owner of the Atlanta Dream, finally kicking her out of the league. Or this can be a story of cowardice, and a story where a question needs to be asked:
How many times does Loeffler, who is anti-Black Lives Matter in a Black Lives Matter city and league, have to humiliate the WNBA before the league takes action against her?
In many ways the latest controversy with Loeffler is less about her and more about the WNBA. Loeffler is what she is. Like so many allies of President Donald Trump, she panders to extremists and white nationalists, despite owning a team in a league that’s heavily Black.
“I adamantly oppose the Black Lives Matter political movement, which has advocated for the defunding of police,” she said in a statement this summer, “called for the removal of Jesus from churches and the disruption of the nuclear family structure, harbored antiSemitic views, and promoted violence and destruction across the country. I believe it is totally misaligned with the values and goals of the WNBA and the Atlanta Dream, where we support tolerance and inclusion.”
That isn’t what BLM stands for and Loeffler knows that. Just as Loeffler, who is a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, knows exactly what she was doing when she filed a joint statement with Senate candidate David Perdue this week opposing the changing of the name of the Atlanta Braves. This was in response to The New York Times reporting the Cleveland baseball team is eliminating the Indians nickname.
The problem with Loeffler’s statement is the Braves have never said they plan to change the name. They’ve said the opposite actually. What she did with that statement is the same as me declaring I refuse to become an underwear model. That wasn’t happening anyway.
It wasn’t a coincidence that she released that statement on the same day early in-person voting started in Georgia for the Jan. 5 runoffs.
Loeffler has made a series of cynical calculations, as algorithmic as the most basic of equations:
Proximity to Trump + Cynicism = Power.
Loeffler is not the first to make these calculations; many men and women in today’s politics have. What makes what she’s doing especially pernicious is she’s using her players, her mostly Black team, as pawns.
It’s so bad with Loeffler that her own players support her opponent, Raphael Warnock, once wearing shirts that read “Vote Warnock.”
Loeffler’s photo with white supremacist Chester Doles, who nearly beat a Black man to death in the 1990s and took part in that ugly rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, is the latest Loeffler act. Loeffler said she had no idea who Doles was when she posed with him. The Warnock campaign released a statement saying they didn’t believe her.
“While Kelly Loeffler runs a campaign based on dividing and misleading Georgians, she is once again trying to distance herself from someone who is a known white supremacist and former KKK leader who nearly beat a Black man to death,” campaign spokesman Michael Brewer wrote. “There’s no acceptable explanation for it happening once, let alone a second time.
“This is not the first time Loeffler has had to try to explain why Chester Doles, a longtime white supremacist who spent decades in the Ku Klux Klan and the neo-Nazi National Alliance and is associated with a racist skinhead gang is appearing at her campaign events,” the statement continued. “When Doles went to a GOP rally in September, Loeffler claimed she was ‘unaware of Doles or the controversy over his attendance.’ Today, just weeks later, Loeffler’s campaign is again trying to use the same excuse that they ‘had no idea who that was.’ ”
The issue with Doles appearing at Loeffler’s rally isn’t about if she knew who he was. It’s that she attracts that type of person.
The WNBA has options to address Loeffler’s actions, but for some reason no one seems to understand they aren’t using them. The league seems to be just hoping people ignore Loeffler.
The WNBA said in July it wouldn’t force Loeffler out but that was before some of the latest incidents with her. A league spokesman did not return an email asking for comment.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver in 2014 fined former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling $2.5 million and banned him for life after he was caught on tape making racist remarks. NBA owners were going to vote Sterling out but he sold the team.
So all this brings us back to that question, and it’s the most important.
How many times does Loeffler, who is anti-Black Lives Matter in a Black Lives Matter city and league, have to humiliate the WNBA before the league takes action against her?
How many?