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Good morning and Happy Friday! Thanks for reading today.
You’re here, but I nearly wasn’t, given that I finally screwed up my courage and got both my second shingles vaccine and my pneumonia vaccine on Wednesday, in the same arm (which was probably a mistake). I was prepared for a really sore upper arm, which I had with the first shingles shot, but I was not prepared to be saddled with a fever and the chills for 48 hours, which is where I currently find myself.
Still, this minor inconvenience is way better than actually having the shingles (which I got at like 30). That was like wearing a belt made of burning horns for a week, and I did not enjoy it. Get your vaccinations, Gen X. Do you really want to be a super-spreader for RFK Jr.’s raw milk army?
No, you don’t.
My point is this: If there’s a big story that I miss today, and you find yourself wondering “OMG, how could she miss that huge and incredibly inconsequential story?!?!” Please note that I spent most of the day passed out on the couch in front of Dateline. Now then.
Let’s take a moment today to talk about the Indiana Fever’s Sophie Cunningham and her comments about trans athletes. If you don’t know who Sophie Cunningham is, I envy you. Cunningham is a (former?) UFC ring girl who currently serves as Caitlin Clark’s “enforcer” on the Fever. She also strikes me as relatively MAGA-adjacent, which she denies, claiming she’s “in the middle.” Cunningham was recently in the meme below, and more recently for an ESPN feature.
I invite you to read the piece and ask yourself if Cunningham would be having the same experience in the WNBA if she wasn’t a straight, conventionally attractive, white woman.
Here’s the excerpt from the ESPN piece that Cunningham is now defending.
You say she's a "MAGA Barbie," as some corners of the internet have taken to calling her? Projection, she says, because of what she looks like and where she's from. She'll weigh in on how to "protect women's sports," she says, because she's in that world and feels qualified to speak to that world. "I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I'm like, 'I never once said that,'" she says. "I think that I am here to extend love. But I also think with that love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn't have to go against biological men."
At first, I assumed Cunningham was close to Clark’s age, and I rolled my eyes and said to myself, “Why do I care what a 24-year-old has to say about anything?” But then I learned Cunningham will be 30 in August, and I decided she’s too old for this kind of bullshit.
I’ve written many times about how rare trans athletes are in the overall sports landscape (I doubt Cunningham has ever had to play against one), how important it is for all girls to have access to sports, and that recent research has shown that trans women don’t have the distinct physical advantage in sports that the right believes they do. In many areas, like lower body strength and lung capacity, cis women actually have an advantage.
Personally, as a cis woman, I’m far more comfortable sharing space with trans women than with cis men, who commit the vast majority of violent crimes against women. And no matter what the right says, no young girls are out there competing against adult men. I spent many years playing soccer with boys as a kid, and no one ever seemed all that concerned about my safety. Probably because I “deserved it” by inserting myself in a male space.
But if Cunningham, or any of these other jokers who only care about “protecting women” when they can use it as a cudgel against the trans community, really wanted to keep young girls safe, there are a variety of other places they can direct their energy.
For example, Cunningham was a ring girl for UFC 329, which featured adjudicated rapist Conor McGregor. I did a pretty thorough search to see if Cunningham had anything to say about McGregor’s history of violence against women, but, shockingly, I came up empty.
In fact, MMA in general has a disproportionate problem with violence against women.
Using horrific assault on Christie Mack by former fighter War Machine (nee Jonathan Koppenhaver) as a jumping off point, HBO's "Real Sports" researched the criminal records of hundreds of MMA fighters:
The show, citing the Bureau of Justice Statistics, states that for every 100,000 American men aged 18 to 39, 360 are arrested for domestic violence. That number drops to 210 for the NFL, they said, using numbers from the USA Today database. Yet HBO's own research -- delving into the backgrounds of hundreds of American-born MMA fighters since 2003 throughout various weight classes -- found that the adjusted rate among top-ranked MMA fighters skyrockets to 750.
In fact, on Wednesday, former UFC champ Claudio Ribeiro was arrested on domestic violence charges in Brazil.
If Cunningham is going to make noises about “protecting girls” from harm, she could start with the UFC and Dana White, who was caught on camera slapping his wife in 2023. According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, one in three women in the US has experienced or will experience intimate partner violence during their lifetime. Meanwhile, the number of trans girls playing sports is minuscule. Trans people make up one to two percent of the US population, and only 12 percent of trans girls play organized sports. In the NCAA, that number means .0002 percent of athletes are trans (roughly 10 trans women for every 500,000 athletes).
Another place Cunningham could better direct her “protect girls” energy is at cis men who sexually abuse young men and women in sports. Per Child Help, between 14 and 29 percent of athletes experience sexual abuse before age 18, and, in 10 percent of those cases, a coach is the perpetrator. Given that more than 27 million American kids play organized sports, and picking the lowest percentage of 14 percent, that means that upwards of 380,000 young athletes have been abused by a coach.
That little snippet doesn’t include Larry Nassar, who sexually abused 265 girls that we know of, Richard Strauss, who sexually abused 162 male athletes at Ohio State (we see you Jim Jordan), the Penn State child sex abuse scandal, or any number of lawsuits against colleges and universities over the sexual abuse of athletes.
Conversely, the only allegations I have seen of trans women harming other athletes are parents complaining that a trans girl is “too big” or “too rough,” which happens in cis women’s sports all the time, and Riley Gaines whining about coming in 5th behind Lia Thomas. Sorry that you didn’t come in 4th, Riley.
Compare the number of young women, both athletes and not, being harmed by cis men with the teeny tiny number of trans girls who just want to play sports with other girls, and consider who is actually causing harm, what’s worth speaking up about, and where we should all be directing our ire. Hint: It’s not at young women who want to play sports.
There’s a difference between actually wanting to protect young women and saying you want to protect cis women — the thing you know will get you accepted by the cishet white male conservative crowd. When Stephen A Smith is your biggest fan, you’ve done something wrong. And Cunningham loves to bang on about being a role model and hating bullies, all while she punches down on the most marginalized little girls in America.
Grow up, Cunningham.
In other news: Break out your tiniest violins for Andrew Tate; Even the Secret Service hates JD Vance; Kentucky is turning on Mitch McConnell; and The High Note.
Here we go.
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I Hate it Here is your insider’s guide to surviving and thriving in HR, from someone who’s been there. It’s not about theory or buzzwords — it’s about practical, real-world advice for navigating everything from tricky managers to messy policies.
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I love this for Andrew Tate
Misogynist podcaster and woman hater extraordinaire Andrew Tate and his brother, Tristan, were arrested in Miami last Saturday on a warrant out of the UK, where the Tate brothers have been charged with sex trafficking and Andrew Tate has been charged with sexual assault.
Apparently, the Tates are still sitting in prison, because Andrew Tate has complaints.
Gosh, that’s a real shame. Do we know if the cannibal neighbor is screaming in general or because he knows Tate is in the next cell? I support his screaming either way.
Everyone hates JD Vance, Part 76,874
A new group has jumped on the bandwagon of JD Vance haters, and you’ll never guess where they work.
On Thursday last week, Secret Service agents groused among themselves as they prepared to deliver another perk to Vice President JD Vance’s family: join a military helicopter crew to fly his young son to his golf lesson.
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Vance planned to travel with his son on the flight to Joint Base Andrews — which includes a secure, world-class golf center — according to two other administration officials with knowledge of his schedule.
But the Secret Service staff’s complaints about a planned chopper ride for an elementary school student reflects a building morale problem inside the team of agents assigned to shield Vance and his young family, according to the two people and another person familiar with the agents’ frustration.
Agents have shared concerns internally about Vance and his office pressing them for trips and assignments that some agents consider an inappropriate or even unprecedented use of government resources compared to prior vice presidents, they said.
Bahahaha! And it gets better:
The Vances recently required several last minute chopper trips to the region around Middleburg, Virginia, so they could hunt for houses to buy or rent there for their expanding family. The couple — who have three children, ages nine, six and four — announced earlier this year that the second lady was pregnant with their fourth child and is expected to deliver late this month.
Previous vice presidents and other protected administration officials traditionally warned the Secret Service of their intended travel days in advance, especially for their family, and sought to provide at least several hours’ notice of changes.
“They change everything,” one of the people said. “They don’t stick to their schedules, and that costs shit-tons of taxpayer money.”
Vance has now removed one member of his protective detail who is suspected of leaking info to MS Now.
Et tu, Louisville Courier-Journal?
McConnell’s home-state newspaper really stuck it to him in a pre-obituary.
In a Wednesday column for the Louisville Courier-Journal, writer Joseph Gerth shares what he describes as his too-early “tribute” to McConnell, noting: “I figured I’d go ahead and tell you what I think about McConnell now — when no one can complain, ‘How dare you write that about a dead guy?’”
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While McConnell “is every bit the detestable figure that Nixon was,” he writes, the senator has “never paid for his sins that have damaged our nation’s trust in government, destroyed the country’s ability to have meaningful dialogue and cemented our nation’s politics as an arena in which winning is the only thing that matters.”
***
Still, he believes the senator’s legacy will be his “cynical and hypocritical manipulation of the U.S. Supreme Court confirmation process,” referring to the senator’s success in blocking Merrick Garland’s Supreme Court nomination in 2016, as well as his embrace of President Donald Trump as a way “to protect and increase his own political power.”
“Even when Trump said racist things about McConnell’s wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, McConnell continued to bend his knee,” he writes. “And that is the legacy of Mitch McConnell.”
Hallelujah, political columns are alive and well in Louisville, Kentucky.
The High Note
Each Day, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and the will to fight another day.
Quick story. Back when “Hey There Delilah” came out, the real-life Delilah was the friend of a friend. From what I know of the situation, this bit of satire is somewhat accurate, except Delilah and whoever wrote the song never dated. He just obsessed about her. That’s all I can think of every time I hear the song.
Hey, survive and advance out there today, kids. Don’t let the bastards get you down. Have a great weekend!
