Serena, Going Off

THE WHOLE WORLD, or the tennis part of it, was watching when Serena Williams, the greatest tennis player in history, melted down emotionally in the worst of all places, the finals of the U.S Open. And the whole world, seemingly,,, had and still ha something to say about it, characteristic of our age of social media. Twitterers will always tweet and retweet. Two camps have emerged, the usual polarization thing, so prevalent in these United States of animosity. There is the pro-Serena anti-establishment camp, and the anti-Serena pro establishment mob, which in this case is in the majority, which is usually the case when anti contends with pro establishment, unless one is talking about populism within the republican, which here we are most certainly not. The, any establishment usually emerges as the prevailing force numerically, if not morally. In this case the establishment appears to have due process and proper jurisprudence on its side, which is certainly not always the case, while the pro Serena anti establishment clique has...raw emotion and righteous indignation. Serena's coach was coaching during the match, a clear violation and tennis nono, and he owned up to it. He said, hell, everyone does it. Great defense, coach. Had Serena simply told him to lay off the coaching, either before or after the umpire did, the entire ugly consequent scene would have been avoided. But, she didn't. She chose instead to take a defensive, righteously outraged approach, lecturing the umpire on her high ethical standards and the umpire's professional responsibilities. (nobody likes to be informed of their own professional responsibilities.) She was duly penalized for arguing too much with a duly empowered authority, which she resented, which resulted in her being further penalized when she threw her racket and calling the ump a "thief". At that point, she and the pro Serena anti-establishment forces took it to a stratospheric level, opening a terrifying can of worms of Pandoran proportions, playing the race and gender card. this would not have happened to a man, and so forth. The world chimed in, and here we are, polarized yet again, over something nonsensical..again. the boorish New York crowd actually booed her sweet twenty year old opponent, to whom Serena has been a life long idol. Way to go, ya schmucks. Social media turned an ugly incident into a feeding frenzy, as usual. Oh, my heavens. If only Princeps, a teenager, had not shot the Arch Duke in 1914. If only Lee Harvey Oswald had missed. If only Bin Laden's boys had been shot down before they got there. And, for the sake of the great sport of tennis and the sacred spirit of good sportsmanship, if only Serena had merely told her coach to knock it off, right off the bat...or, racket...