When news broke that Brittney Griner and her Phoenix Mercury teammates were verbally harassed at a Dallas airport on Saturday, players and coaches across the WNBA raised their voices for increased security and chartered flights, the latter of which is not a part of everyday life in the league. Their focus seemed to be everywhere but the place it really should have been: on the perpetrator himself.
I refuse to say his name because that’s the oxygen that gives him life, and calling him a clout-chasing social influencer is undeniably accurate but also woefully inadequate. The person in the video was not interested in having an honest conversation with Griner about her time in a Russian prison for having hash oil in her luggage while playing overseas, nor was he truly interested in her feelings about the United States doing a prisoner swap to gain her release. His social media post immediately afterward reflected someone who was more interested in making a scene. He titled the post “Calling Out Brittney Griner” and even says in the video clip that she “hates” America.
It’s an understatement to say the country is in a bad place when it comes to civil discourse. The ability to disagree with each other in a respectful way seems to diminish by the day if not the minute, in…
