My cherished reader may not have seen the incident depicted above. It involved a tennis finalist who was reprimanded on three counts during the match. According to the rules, a player is forbidden from being coached, abusing the umpire during play and smashing a racket. The alleged culprit denied the first two and delivered a bad-tempered tirade aimed at the umpire. The cartoon was then published.
Since the player could have been of either (pc any) gender or any race, I fail to see how the cartoon can be deemed sexist or racist. I recall that the iconic John McEnroe was often the butt of cartoonists’ jokes for similarly abusive behaviour.
Why was that not pilloried on the same grounds?
Boadicea's Chariot 
a) It’s all in the lips, dear (Racist)
b) Haven’t a clue, neither does my lawyer daughter (Sexist)
Not entirely sure that anyone in the middle of an intense game of anything could have seen, or bothered with a coach gesticulating (I’m sure all coaches do) in the middle of a match. I find it very hard to accept that anyone should be penalised for their coach’s actions.
Smashing a racket? They all do it – do they all get equal penalties? I don’t know – so, please, let me know.
As for a ‘bad-tempered tirade aimed at the umpire’ – when you know you’ve lost what’s the point in keeping quiet? As I understand it, the lady in question faced more than a few ‘nit-picking’ comments regarding her dress before this match.
In my very humble opinion – when you know the odds are stacked against you- the only way to go down is to go down fighting!
I’m heartily sick of the word ‘racist’ – it has become utterly meaningless. The cartoon is simply crude.
Boa, akshully racket abuse is always punished! And she, like Mac, has always gone down fighting. I would only add that the lady in question does present a big target!
This is what the Australian Bolt Report had to say on the matter.
Boadicea, bad-tempered is one thing, although generally the only person to blame for losing is yourself. But to call the umpire a thief and a liar is disgusting. I have never been a fan of Williams and to drag her baby daughter into this row is disgraceful. I like Andrew Castle’s (former British No 1 tennis player and now a commentator) comment in yesterday’s Mail. He wrote:
” I am playing (tennis) tomorrow. If I get a bad call I am going to smash my racket, protest I am a father, demand an apology and claim I’ve been treated differently because of my gender. Then I will go home and grow up.”
I think it’s time Serena retired. To judge by one photograph she also needs to shed quite a lot of the baby fat. There is of course nothing she can do to repair the damage she caused her opponent, whose first Grand Slam win this was and who should have been able to enjoy the moment. This was the worst effect of her tantrum, worse even than her insults to the umpire.
At a previous US Open Williams turned her frustration on a female line-judge, threating to “stuff the f… ball down her f… throat. But since it was a female official she insulted, the pc feminists didn’t get up on their hind legs to defend her.
She was getting soundly beaten by the young Japanese-Haitian girl Osaka. I suspect she was really mourning the fact that she is getting a bit past it.
That said, I really do not care as tennis bores me to tears.