MAC, THE STRIFE
Former champ now knows how Adler felt
HOW DOES it feel now, Johnny Mac? How does it feel when you’re falsely accused and have to defend yourself, by yourself, against absurd accusations?
How does John McEnroe think Doug Adler felt — and still feels — when McEnroe cowardly took a pass after their network, ESPN, fired Adler for being a racist based on a claim McEnroe knew to be preposterous?
In a world gone nuts, now McEnroe is on the defensive for inane claims that he deeply and publicly offended a young woman, recent U.S. Open champ Emma Raducanu, this summer after the 18year-old Brit withdrew during a match at Wimbledon due to “breathing troubles.”
Drawing upon his own excessively nervous experience as an 18year-old playing at Wimbledon against Jimmy Connors, McEnroe, working the tournament for the BBC, said it appeared Raducanu’s nerves “just got a little bit too much” for her.
And now, after Raducanu’s thoroughly unexpected victory in Flushing, McEnroe is being bashed for his bashing of Radacanu, which, of course, is ridiculous as he never came close to bashing her.
As McEnroe last week told CNN, “I meant exactly what I said.”
What’s the big deal? There is none. But these are days when anyone who chooses to make a big deal out of nothing will succeed, especially if fabricated furor can be attached to race, gender or politics.
But again, where was McEnroe to defend Adler when the entire tennis and TV media and anyone in the game who could apply logic and reason to the facts abandoned him after he was fired by ESPN as a full-fledged racist during the 2017 Australian Open?
Adler was summarily canned after a stringer for The New York Times tweeted a lie — that Adler had, for no given reason, just called Venus Williams “a gorilla,” when, in fact, Adler praised her with, “You see Venus move in and put the guerrilla effect on, charging.”
“Guerilla tennis” by then had become such a common phrase that Nike made an ad campaign in 1995 starring Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras playing “Guerrilla Tennis.”
But ESPN, always cowardly and selectively petrified by the most dubious of racial claims, panicked. It fired Adler in anticipation of a Times follow-up that never came — likely because The Times knew its reporter had been recklessly wrong.
Yet no one stood up Adler, not Nike-funded McEnroe and not Nike, which was busy backing radicalized Colin Kaepernick’s antiAmericanism. All silently allowed the gross injustice perpetrated against Adler.
And the one person who could have put a quick end to the unjust, insane and now four-year persecution of Adler, Venus Williams, didn’t want any part of it. She knew Adler had used a tennis term, that he did not call her a “gorilla.” She could have saved Adler’s career, his reputation and his health — he soon after had a stress-related heart attack.
But she took a pass, with, “I pay attention and address situations that are noteworthy.’’ So she allowed an innocent man to walk the plank now reserved for accused racists, real or imagined. She could still throw Adler a life ring, but she might still consider the continuing, Devil’s Island-doom of an innocent soul a “situation” that’s not “noteworthy.”
Ah, but now the kicker. This past Monday, The Times’ guest columnist was Nike-funded Venus Williams. She wrote about the importance of maintaining and improving her physical and mental health. And she advocates that we all show more sensitivity and help toward the misfortunate.
She ended it with, “Let’s show up for ourselves and for one another and recognize what it takes to be strong.”
Quite candidly and indelicately, I wanted to puke.