Accountable

Without question, there has been too much attention paid to these outbursts and lack of reverence from public figures as of late. However, while Congress has voted to rebuke Joe Wilson and Michael Jordan’s candid (bitter?) Hall of Fame speech has been confined to just basketball media, we’re still talking about the potty mouth of Serena Williams and the complete absurdity of Kanye West’s disruption.

The truth is that while there is no reason for these moments to receive any more attention than they have been given, there’s something at play that is not easy to recognize or as ‘sexy’ to talk about: organizational and/or industrial accountability.

When you look at the two incidents, it’s easy – a bit too easy, perhaps – to say that the backlash on all sides is racially motivated. After all, these are two prominent African-Americans who not only make an impact in their respective arenas, but they have crossed over into other areas (for both, fashion). However, at least in this Scribe’s eyes, that’s the lone significant similarity.

As mentioned in ‘All-American’ in regards to Melanie Oudin, Serena is the biggest star in an individual sport that only gains mainstream attention four times a year. The fact that this happened at the US Open in Queens, New York with ESPN and CBS as broadcasting partners only makes for a longer national conversation, for better or worse. Finally, the story continues to run because tennis has not had success in finding a few good women to consistently battle Serena (and her sister, Venus). Truthfully, if this happened at the Tashkent Open, this would amount to nothing more than a fist-shaking YouTube video of the day.

While non-sports media outlets continue to run with the story, some of the smoldering flames that are still out here are from news about the possibility that Williams would be suspended from next year’s Open. The fines that were imposed on her upset a few people because $10,500 is a pittance, but to be fair, tennis players are more like independent contractors who play for every tourney check than salaried employees who are guaranteed a constant paycheck. Yet, at least when an athlete makes a mistake, there are immediate penalties places upon him/her to go with public ridicule and disappointment within the involved organizations. We may not always agree with how the powers-that-be decide to punish its players, but at least the measures exist.

That’s not the case in the music industry. Despite being on record companies that make pretty album covers and pay radio stations for airplay* and promote their work until the album release date, these companies at large aren’t what you’d call the most organizationally sound businesses. Few of its artists gain significant exposure. Finances for those artists arte pretty questionable, to say the least. Most of all, with the outright shadiness of the business, bad news is good publicity for the artists that receive it, even if we should know better.

Now, unless they release an artist or band from a contract (usually because of the classic cop-out of not being ‘promotable’), it’s not very often that you hear about labels dropping the hammer on their most controversial signees. West has a chronicled history of making himself the center of attention for all the wrong reasons, yet no one – not his label, not his handlers, not the companies that stock his music, not the media that plays his songs or videos – have ever done anything to curb or stop him. Just as many would consider the Minnesota Vikings as enablers in the Brett Favre saga, the music industry as a whole is an enabler to the mainstream artists that make more news for their screw-ups than their music.

In the sports world, it’s second nature to demand swift action from teams and leagues when a player commits a wrong, on or off the field. For all of the anger about the money involved with these games, fans and media can at least scream “suspend him!” until they are blue in the face, knowing that for every action, there is a punitive reaction written into the by-laws of these organizations. Even in much maligned sports such as track & field and boxing, individual athletes and trainers answer to their sports’ organizations along with state and national athletic commissions for their transgressions.

In music, however, the lone penalty there is for an artist’s foolishness is not buying the record (or these days not downloading the songs and not watching the videos). While an economic boycott seems to be the most direct penalty any musician can feel from the fans, (s)he does not have to perform in front of the public during a season. In fact, outside of the rap industry, there aren’t too many artists who release new material yearly, let alone remain the public eye consistently until said new material is released or there’s a tour coming up. As much as the public claims to hate West now, if he has a ‘hot song’ out, the music world will bow down to his supposed greatness until there’s someone else to fawn over or he puts out a new track. If anything, he basically has to become a pariah like Chris Brown to find himself without top-selling records.

Will Serena lose some fans after her tirade? Possibly. Did Kanye? Hopefully after years of waffling from previous acts. Yet, as a society, we continue to demand athletes to shut up, play and ‘be role models’ while we allow artists to skate away relatively unfazed because of some idea that we can infringe on the creatives. Seems a bit unfair, doesn’t it?

Say What?!?!: So I'm not President Obama's favorite basketball player? I'm truly saddened by this.

All-American

Somewhere on Twitter, I caught a comment that said the hype around tennis’ latest sensation; Melanie Oudin is based on her being white.
Oh boy.

It was actually a suggested (or for the non-Twitter people, re-tweeted) piece from Fanhouse that discusses how the recent ascension of the Marietta, Georgia teen has been pushed in the direction of the "Great White Hope" in a sport dominated by the Williams sisters, two of the best to have ever held racquets. Admittedly, at first glance, there was a cringe as it seems that we play this hand over and over again in other sports.

Yet, after reading what Greg Couch had to say on the topic, it was hard to not agree with the sentiments, no matter how unfair they are to the seventeen-year old.

Every column I write about women's tennis, it seems, ends up with comments or emails from readers that turn the discussion to race, and oftentimes devolving into something ugly for or against the sisters.

And it's an open secret in tennis that Serena Williams fans resent Maria Sharapova, with the feeling that much of her popularity and huge endorsement dollars come from fitting the white ideal, tall, thin and blonde.

She's a giant Barbie Doll. Serena, the world's best player, is not.

I mentioned this to two USTA (United States Tennis Association) officials the other day, and both just nodded.

Though there won’t be that Serena-Melanie matchup that USTA, ESPN and CBS officials clamored for (thanks to Oudin’s loss to Caroline Woziniacki), the stage has been set, so long as Oudin proves to be more than the latest flash in the pan.

The issue that sticks out to me in Oudin’s surge in recognition has less to do with race (certainly a factor for some more than others) and more to do with the unique nature of the sport. There’s a long list of white athletes who have been viewed from the prism – from Pete Rose to Larry Bird to Brett Favre to even lesser talents such as Jason Sehorn and Wally Szczerbiak – even if all those players wanted to do was to perform without thinking of their sports as sociological experiments. However, they performed in team sports where no matter if the ‘face of the franchise’ was the best player or the best looking, (s)he relied on teammates to succeed or fail.

Tennis is a sport that does not have the cache of other single-participant sports such as golf, mixed martial arts or boxing. Even though its athletes play a rather grueling schedule of matches throughout the year, the only time that the sport gains mainstream attention here in the States is for the four major tournaments; including the ongoing US Open. Compare that to MMA and boxing, where monthly pay-per-view events and premium cable deals allow for organizers to make efforts to push their products heavy in the two weeks prior to the fight cards. Golf is aided by national broadcasting deals for all of their tournaments, even if the ugly truth is that unless Tiger Woods is playing, there is no other individual player that captures attention outside of the sport’s core fans.

The sport does have The Tennis Channel, but it is only offered as an add-on for most cable packages. Deals with national broadcasters are based mostly on rights to the majors and a few non-major tourneys leading to those events, but there is no constant presence of the sport with those arrangements. Star development is a bit trickier because of that lack of constant exposure to the mainstream audience. It’s the reason why when those majors come around, the powers-that-be make concerted efforts to give the players as much media exposure as possible, even if the strategy seems a bit flawed and inconsistent.

In the case of Oudin, the idea that she’s the latest "Great White Hope" may have its merits in some people’s eyes, but probably more important to the sport, she also happens to be seventeen, female and American.

To be past your prime in your late-twenties seems unfathomable in other sports, but for some reason, not when it comes to women’s tennis. When Maria Sharapova is struggling her way back into top form after injuries last year and the Williams sisters are still the most feared players in the women’s side of the draw, the need for someone to emerge from the pack. When you add that the perception of the men’s side of the game is boring changed thanks to better competition to Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, the WTA seems to be fiddling around even more for the next breakout star, even if she has yet to prove able to consistently hang with the elite.

As for race, though we shouldn’t have to think about its role in her ascendance, it is just another thing to check off on the list in building a superstar. Even as some may gleefully laugh at the notion that Oudin would have challenged Serena (or even Venus, if the elder sister was not bounced early), the truth is that this isn’t just a racial conundrum, but an overall issue with the way tennis markets itself to the American market.