The Most Irresponsibly Stupid Column of the Year

By Jeffrey Blehar

Friday, July 24, 2026

 

The Women’s National  Basketball Association is once again in the  news, a bit like a recurring flare-up of gout: You have no idea where it comes from or why it strikes so randomly, but when it does, it’s the only thing you can talk about. Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham — she of the magnificently memetic pointed finger — is apparently now on trial by underemployed left-wing controversialists and bored Bluesky types alike for her repeated public expressions of TERF-like bigotry and exclusion. At least I’m told that’s what they are; her comments read to me like common sense, politely phrased, but that’s why I let others do the thinking for me.

 

Then of course there is Cunningham’s superstar teammate Caitlin Clark. I’m willing to bet that if my readers know anything at all about the WNBA, it is either directly or indirectly related to her. She is widely believed to be one of the best players in the game and is beyond a doubt the league’s marquee attraction. When she went down with injuries last season, ticket sales for away games plummeted along with the league’s already meager ratings.

 

So I have never understood why sports columnists, as well as much of the league itself, seem to hate her. Perhaps it’s jealousy. But it sometimes results in true verbal atrocity, which brings us to what I will label — in July, mind you — the Most Irresponsibly Stupid Column of the Year. Come on down and collect your prize, Nancy Armour of USA Today!

 

Armour’s column is so stridently deranged that its title announces up-front that you’re taking a temporary trip to the moral funhouse: “It’s Time to Stop Pretending That Caitlin Clark’s Flops Are Harmless.” First off, for those prone to misusing the phrase “begging the question,” here is a perfect example of a title that does just that: it assumes that what we’ve seen are flops. I see a woman who has, quite frankly, been kicked around the court like a hackeysack by opposing teams for several years and is complaining to the refs about not getting foul calls, as players often will. How is that harmful?

 

Because in Armour’s moral world, the real threat here is not to Caitlin Clark’s right quadricep but rather to the dignity and safety of the black women who play against her. As Armour describes it, if Clark “flops” during a game . . . she’s apparently encouraging her white fans to take justice into their own hands and lynch the hated blacks. I’m not kidding about this, though I wish I were:

 

It shouldn’t need reminding this country has an awful history of Black people being harmed, even killed, in the name of “defending” white women. The irony of the WNBA’s All-Star Game is that it’s happening this weekend in Chicago, the hometown of Emmett Till, who became an icon of the civil rights movement after his tragic murder. The local art gallery is currently hosting an exhibit imagining his life if he hadn’t been lynched. While it’s incumbent on the WNBA to do more to protect its players, there also should be an expectation on Clark to recognize the broader implications of her actions being weaponized.

 

First off, marvel at that rhetorical stretch. Emmett Till was killed in Mississippi by Jim Crow racists in the Fifties, which is just like Caitlin Clark complaining after being fouled at next week’s All-Star Game . . . and it’s all connected because Chicago. (This one fact alone meant I had to write this. Somehow it’s always MAGA country’s fault.) Then step back further and gaze with disbelief upon the neo-Stalinist moral logic: because others might react badly to her public disapproval at being abused, she must remain silent (and take more abuse). It is howlingly, outrageously wrong — a complete inversion of all accepted principle.

 

Armour dashed off an apology yesterday morning for her “inartful comparison,” but she didn’t apologize for her moral logic. I don’t expect her to. I would like to know why the media participates in these deranged attacks against the league’s most popular player. I already know why the players dislike Clark: everybody understands the phenomenon of crabs in a bucket. But why on earth would the media join them in that? I could go into a lengthy disquisition here about the fundamental sociological differences between groups of women and groups of men, but that would probably get me dismissed from polite society altogether — and I’m barely allowed in here in the first place.