Last Month in Righteous Outrage

It took a while. But the trolls told on themselves. They always do.

They were rudderless since June, another June spent demanding Straight Pride Month. Like some omnipotent “They” decides these things for us. The trolls never stopped to consider that everyone’s welcome, that there’s a color of the rainbow for straight folks too, that Pride is for all of us. Or that straight people haven’t lived countless generations being ostracized, outcast, excommunicated, disowned, harassed, fired, arrested, assaulted, murdered… for being straight.

But June is behind us and these guys, because it’s mostly guys isn’t it, couldn’t just slink back into their rough caves. Nah. Their pent-up anger sought out any woke thing they could find. Days and weeks of simmering outrage passed, and it all boiled over in the course of a single week in August, when…

…Jen Pawol became the first female ump in Major League Baseball.

Holy shit. Swing your swords boys, the barbarians have breached the gates. They’re destroying America. But my favorite Husky-turned-Mariner broadcaster, the brave and steady Angie Mentink, tweeted about Pawol on the Twitter. Mentink, of course, is a groundbreaker herself. Thrilled to see it, Angie said. And she got the predictable return fire from, well, you already know, right?

Now, to be clear, I go to the Twitter to follow my favorite sports journalists. But as the Twitter algorithm well knows, I drop a snarky post now and then. So I questioned a Pawol critic what he meant by “they’re invading our spaces.” In a flash I, a simple old man with a legit question, was transformed. According to that tweeter I’m a phaggot (his word) trendy cookie cutter DEI Seattle communist. Pssst… dude… I mean, I don’t even live in Seattle. This guy’s harmless spew wasn’t close to the worst Twitter attack on Pawol that day. But he in particular ratted himself out for what he really is. Shallow, unthinking, enraged, and pretty likely sad and lonely. If he’s not sad and lonely, imagine what it’s like for whoever spends time with him.

…Seattle’s Space Needle flew the Indian flag.

The flag recognized India’s 78 years of independence from Great Britain. There’s nothing more American than celebrating independence from the Brits, righto? Cheerio, mate. There was an Indian culture festival downtown too. The Times called it “vibrant” like a hundred times. I’m exaggerating of course, but you get the point. Vibrant colors, vibrant culture, vibrant dance performances, and vibrant might describe the online backlash. Or vibrating, humming with hate and derision and send-em-all-home and revoke their H1-Bs and we got us too many Indians here, Jeb, let’s do sumpin’ about it. And the tiresome, threadbare the-only-flag-anyone-oughta-fly-is-the-American-flag-‘cuz-unity-n-shit people elbowed and virtue-signaled their way into the chat. These are the people who fly their MAGA flag, their BlueLives flag, their Dallas Cowboys flag, in their yards and on their oversized pickups. And I bet they don’t bitch about Mexican flags on Cinco de Mayo, because tequila and cheesy quesadillas are awesome, and Trump loves him some taco bowls. But when it’s a party to celebrate a strange foreign culture they know nothing about, even a culture that has brought, frankly, a vibrant new character to who we are as Americans, they sure can get all butthurt. Mericafuckyeah.

…Sue Bird earned herself a statue.

21 seasons with the Storm and only the Storm, 4 WNBA titles, 5 Olympic golds. If anyone deserved a sports statue in this town, man, I mean the M’s haven’t even sniffed the World Series and we’re about to get our third Mariner statue, including two guys who didn’t play their whole career here. There’s a bronze of Lenny Wilkens right next to Bird, and who doesn’t love Lenny for that single ‘79 Sonics title, but the dude spent the vast majority of his 45 years in the game playing and/or coaching for six other teams.

So in spite of Bird’s steely devotion and loyalty to our town, in spite of two decades of unmatched excellence and multiple championships, the detractors and ridiculers did their damndest to drop a black cloud on the admiration from Storm fans. Comments on the Times coverage derided the WNBA, called its fans woke and the league DEI, alleged all the players are lesbian (wrapped in predictable tired old slurs), demanded the league shut down and stop pushing the gay agenda in our faces. They mocked Bird for playing in a weak mess of a sport, and trashed Bird’s wife, Megan Rapinoe.

Stop for a minute to  picture the people who lash out like that on line. It’s so easy to slam a few words into your phone and flex your big ol’ macho biceps as you hit “post.” It’s way harder to suck it up and honor a human who has achieved so much, when you peaked on the JV golf team and you’re still bitter 20 years out of high school. But when you think about it, picking the easy way has a lot to do with why you peaked in JV golf.

…and the Minnesota Vikings hired two men for their dance team.

Yes, male cheerdancers. Oh, lordy, the courageous Vikings.

**CONTENT WARNING: TURN BACK NOW IF YOU CANT TAKE DISCUSSION OF PENISES & ERECTIONS.**

Rational fans said “who cares, I came to watch football, so what if someone on the dance team has a penis?” But goddamn was their so-what drowned out by Armageddon, hellfire, damnation, horsemen of the apocalypse, and the end of the freaking world. What we have here is the nexus of multiple levels of right wing ideology, from traditionalist simpletons whose heads explode when cheerleaders/dancers aren’t girls in short skirts, to religious creepers who secretly think cheer girls are sluts — so maybe there’s a chance with them — but it’s way more sinful if there’s a dude out there. And we got the testosterone-poisoned bros who show up to catch a little football in between working up a woodrow for the dancers.

And that’s, ummm, the rub, so to speak. Isn’t it?

You claim you’re a football fan, you wear the colors, you drink too much at the tailgate, you holler for your team. But it ain’t a fall Sunday without that sneaky boner in your pants. You get a little stir down there anticipating the pregame cheer show, a little more when they run onto the field, and suddenly you realize you got a full hardon for a couple of guys. And that’s intolerable. So you blame the team, you blame the woke mob, you blame the male dancers. It couldn’t possibly be you that’s the weird one. I mean, about that boner… maybe you just can’t admit you’re gay?

So there we were, soaking up all the misogyny and change-phobia from the last seven days…

…and Snoop made the news.

Yeah, Martha Stewart’s buddy Snoop. Evidently he’s still relevant. Seems he took a grandkid to a children’s movie that had a two-mommy family in it. When the kid asked how those girls could have a baby together, Snoop didn’t know how to answer. He told his fans, yeah he still has a few fans, he didn’t think “those things” should be in a kid movie. Wait til they’re older, Snoop said. So he blamed the theater and the studio and Hollywood in general for his own inability to cope with a simple question from a four-year-old. Because somehow, it’s too much. The movie showed everyday people who exist in real life, and it was too much.

This comes from a guy who famously showed up on a red carpet with two women on dog leashes. So he might not oughta be lecturing on purity. And the kid was old enough to understand that a man and a woman can have a baby together, so it’s not like procreation was a taboo topic. Why the hell not say “sure, bud, some girls love boys, some girls love girls. I guess they adopted those babies because those babies needed a family. Isn’t that cool? Want some popcorn?”

Funny thing, most of us were raised with fairy tales about sleeping defenseless girls who get kissed by a stranger without consent. We’ve been socialized to get all giddy at how romantic it is that she woke up and they were happy ever after. As if non-consensual touching is normal and good. But we can’t take it, don’t want to have to explain it, when we see something so full of love between two normal consenting people.

What’s wrong with simple, factual answers, free from our own fears and biases? What’s wrong with them is, they’re insanely hard to reach for sometimes. And change is hard, when you’ve decided to rail against anything that doesn’t fit for you. Two moms holding hands. A woman’s voice shouting “strike one!” Brown people partying on our downtown streets. A life-size bronze of a non-male athlete. Even a talented dancing dude on the fifty yard line who, like that umpire, had to be twice as good as the others to even get a shot.

This isn’t new.

In 1968, way before the Twitter, Charles Schulz created a black kid named Franklin to join the Peanuts gang. Schulz did it in reaction to Martin Luther King’s murder, and he famously threatened to quit when the publisher said he’d been getting letters, and maybe stop showing black and white kids together in a kids’ comic. Because, y’know, it was too much. And it made some newspaper readers uncomfortable. Schulz essentially said, “tough shit,” and risked his livelihood for what he knew was right. Change is hard. It takes risk, persistence, and courage to drive change. Sometimes it takes even more courage to accept it.

Be brave.