#anyways sure ill feed the washington fans

[taylorshope]

[owlways-and-forever]

Author’s Note: I'm super excited for this story, and I hope y'all enjoy it as much as I have enjoyed planning and writing it. Huge shout out to @allons-y-to-hogwarts-713, who made the dope header for this story! Another giant thanks to you guys, the readers, for picking this story up, especially to those of you who choose to reblog and leave reviews, it's the fuel that feeds writers and keeps us going. I will be trying stick to a strict weekly update schedule, so you can expect a new chapter every Monday evening. Summary: Killian was the star of the basketball team, until an injury dramatically alters things for him. Emma is a talented usher and a very enthusiastic fan. Will Killian find Emma’s exuberant cheering endearing, or will she get lost in the sea of fans? Word Count: 1600 (1600) Links: ao3, ff.net

Prologue - The Fall

Killian was insanely nervous. More nervous than he had any reason to be, but it was senior night and the big rivalry game and he really didn’t want to let the team down. He knew wasn’t going to be starting the game – Graham was a senior after all - but Killian also knew that he would get plenty of playing time anyway, especially if Graham got into foul trouble the way he had been lately. Killian was only a sophomore but he had really come into his own as a shooting guard, with a .489 overall shooting average and a .518 from behind the arc. He was a rising star, with whispers of the Wooden Award floating here and there, in circles of people in the know. Killian tried not to pay much attention to such rumours as they only served to distract, but still, the could feel the pressure building. He made his way to the court for the final shoot around, just a few minutes before the anthem was sung and the lineups were announced.

Killian always felt slightly ill at ease when the anthem played, it just made him miss home and made him almost wish that he could have had all this back in England. Mostly he missed his brother. Staying in England wouldn’t have helped that however, since Liam spent most of his days traveling the world with the Royal Navy. He kept promising to make it to one of Killian’s games but his breaks hadn’t aligned yet. Liam assured Killian that he watched every game on TV or listened on the wireless, but it wasn’t the same, and the two brothers hadn’t seen each other since Killian started school almost two years earlier. For some reason, as he listened to the anthem blaring on the court that night, Killian couldn’t stop thinking about Liam.

Killian joined the rest of the team as they formed two lines, ready to introduce the starting five - #18 Will Scarlett from Detroit, Michigan, #30 Anton Maly from Mikulov, Czech Republic, #43 Victor Whale from De Soto, Texas, #8 Captain Graham Humbert from Waltham, Massachusetts, #12 Captain Phillip Fitzroy from Washington, D.C. As each of the starters was announced, they ran between the two lines, high fived the rest of the team, and chest bumped each other, smiles and excitement and blood pounding through their veins to the beat of the roaring crowd. Killian took his seat on the bench, knotting his fingers together as he prepared himself for tip off.

The game did not start off well. Anton got two quick fouls under the basket for not keeping his feet firmly planted, something the center had a problem with in general, as he generally felt far more inclined to go for the steal. It didn’t help that the Tar Heels had a power forward who knew how to draw the foul like nobody else, and made sure he hit the basket every time to boot. By half, they were down fourteen points, and Killian had only played two minutes. Graham hadn’t gotten in foul trouble, but he also wasn’t playing his best, with only 6 points on the board. Still, Coach wanted to give him a chance, so Killian spent most of the first half sitting on the bench, watching in frustration. They all got a pretty stern talking to in the locker room at half, Coach’s own frustration seething. Four-star freshman David Nolan sat with his head in his hands, and Killian thought the poor kid might burst into tears. He was such a nice guy, a bit naïve and innocent, and Killian had his doubts as to whether or not David was cut out for such a high profile position.

They began the second half with same starters, but it was only about two minutes before Coach got frustrated and told Killian to make his way to half to check in. Things lit up for Killian in the second half. Shot after shot when in, and he watched the numbers tick up next to his name – 3, 6, 22 points. He couldn’t seem to miss, every time, just fake forward, step back, shot, basket. Anton pulled down a defensive rebound and Killian seemed to know it was going to happen, he was already countering on offense - he was miles ahead of his defender. Anton threw the ball up the court and Killian caught it with no problem, dribbled the last few feet, and then launched himself into the air. The ball sank through the basket, and Killian’s hands closed around the rim, he could already hear the crowd reacting, roaring with excitement, and then…

Another body slammed into him, and he felt his own body flying past the basket, but his left hand was still holding on, and he could feel the tendons in his wrist tearing. As he let go and fell, his arms went out instinctively, and he felt another searing pain as he landed on his hands. He suspected that he would have heard the bones in his hands shattering had his own gut-wrenching scream not torn through the air and filled his ears instead. Pain was spreading from his hand but it was almost too much for him to process, all he could do was grit his teeth and try with all his might not to scream as he felt the vibrations of every footstep of the staff surrounding him. The team trainer gently tried to pry Killian’s arm away from where he was cradling it to his chest. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Killian could hear a scuffle on the edge of the court, but he was beginning to feel faint and he couldn’t concentrate on the sound.

“That is my brother, you incompetent ingrate!” a voice bellowed, and Killian’s eyes found the man fighting to get past security. He had curly, sand-colored hair, and from Killian’s vantage point, he looked an awful lot like Liam.

Liam’s doppelganger pushed his way onto the court, shouldering through the security guards as if they concerned him about as much as a gnat, and knelt down next to Killian on the floor, taking his uninjured hand.

“Killian?” he said, trying to get Killian’s eyes to focus on him.

“Brother?” Killian replied, but he felt hazy, the pain clouding his mind. “You can’t be Liam, my brother is in Oman.”

“Killian, it’s me, I wanted to surprise you.” His eyes widened; Killian was absolutely astonished that his brother could have made the effort to surprise him by coming to a game.

“You’re here,” Killian sighed, as if the idea of having Liam by his side alleviated some of the pain he was feeling.

Emma watched #5 fall to the floor and immediately knew something was wrong. It looked gruesome, and the way Jones was lying on the floor, it had to be serious. He just wasn’t moving, he was lying completely still, as if all his muscles had clenched at once. Emma knew that feeling, she could remember it from when she broke her leg, it was what happened when you were in so much pain that you couldn’t even fathom moving. One of the nursing interns in the hall looked up at the TV and shook her head.

“Poor kid,” Mary Margaret sighed, her green eyes widening sadly.

“What do you mean?” Emma asked, turning to her friend. “It looks bad, but he’ll recover, probably still go on to have a fantastic NBA career with a model trophy wife and everything.” She sounded just a little too bitter and she knew it, her present relationship problems reflected all too clearly in her voice.

“Em,” Mary Margaret answered, her tone somewhere in between scolding and pitying. “It looked pretty bad. If the tendons are severed severely enough or if there’s nerve damage… basketball requires two hands, and if he doesn’t make a complete recovery, his career will be over.”

“It can’t really be that bad, can it?” Emma asked, but her stomach knotted uncomfortably. She really needed to stop visiting Mary Margaret in the Emergency Room, she hated seeing the gruesome injuries, but she just needed a break from her lab sometimes. Her boss, Albert Spencer, was a complete jerk, and more often than not, Emma felt the need to duck out of the lab for a few minutes in order to maintain her cool.

“Hey Em, I don’t mean to kick you out, but they just radioed that they’re going to bring the guy over here, so unless you want to see a compound fracture, you’ve got about fifteen minutes to get back to your lab.”

“Yeah, okay,” Emma answered. “I’m just gonna steal some coffee from you guys first, and then I’ll go back to gene splicing.”

“Alright, sounds good,” Mary Margaret replied distractedly, her fingers toying with the hem of her pink scrubs.

“You want me to bring you some back?” Emma offered, giving her friend a curious look.

“Uh, yes, thank you,” she nodded. “Just half a cup, please.”

By the time Emma came back with the coffee, the emergency room was bustling, nurses and doctors moving at top speed as they prepared for the imminent arrival of the school’s star basketball player (well, one of them). When they wheeled him in (Emma had, of course, hung out just around the corner to see) Emma couldn’t help but notice how blue his eyes were, and she wondered if the pain was accentuating it, like a fever, or if they always looked that way.

[alittleoptimistic]

Stormy Night

Fandom: Hamilton

Summary: Hamilton never fully recovered from the illness he had as a teenager and hides from everyone the fact that he is sick more often than not.

Pairing: HamXBurr if you want it to be I guess but it’s really just friendship

“... Are you still awake?”

Burr sighed. He flicked open his eyes to complete darkness. “Yes.”

He sat up slowly and looked down at the young man beside him. He couldn’t see Alexander, but he could picture him well. The unapologetic look in his eyes.

They had not planned on getting stuck out here in the middle of the night. But a lot of unplanned things happened in the war.

Hamilton had been delivering a message, and Burr was instructed to go with him. There was no one else. It was well known that Washington was not Burr’s biggest fan. So it had surprised Burr when he’d been approached.

“I cannot stop him,” his Excellency said. “When Hamilton gets’s an idea in his head…”

Burr nodded. “Believe me, I know.”

“Keep an eye on him.”

Burr intended to.

On their way back, a storm worthy of Thor came barrelling down on them like a demon. They rode back through the rain until Aaron spotted Alexander slipping sideways on his horse. They were soaked to the bone and shivering violently and the coats over their heads did very little to soothe them. There would be no more riding tonight.

Quickly, Burr caught up, mud splashing up onto his boots from the horse’s quick steps. He grabbed Hamilton’s reins and shook his shoulder. “Hamilton. Hamilton, what’s wrong?”

Hamilton blinked tiredly at him. His heavily bagged eyes told wonders about his condition. “I’m fine, Burr. Let’s keep going.”

This was a blatant lie, and they both knew it. “No,” Burr shook his head. “Come on. We’ll camp and continue in the morning.” He had to talk loudly over the crashing storm.

Shaking his head, Alexander tried to protest, but Burr just tightened his hold on both of their horse's�� reins and led them to a flat place beneath the trees on the side of the road. They were in the middle of nowhere, and the ‘road’ they were traveling on was hardly a road at all. The rain only made everything worse.

Burr slid off his horse, muscles protesting, and tied up the animal quickly. He’d feed her in a moment. Right now, Hamilton was going to fall off his horse if Burr didn’t do something quickly.

He was well aware that Alexander was not very good at taking care of himself. Nothing stopped him. Of course, he would consent to a very hard ride through a storm in the middle of the night when he was ill.

And given the rattling coughs he kept attempting to hide, Aaron was rather certain Alexander was very sick.

Honestly. The idiot was going to get himself killed if he kept up like this…

Quickly, Burr stepped up to Hamilton and shook his shoulder. Hamilton mumbled something unintelligible in response.

“I’m going to set up a tent. Do you have one?”

Hamilton gestured vaguely at the pack on the back of his horse.

“Good.”

“I’ll hel-”

Burr rolled his eyes and sighed testily. “No. Just… don’t move, alright?”

A mutter.

Good enough. Burr quickly unpacked the thick blanket that served as a tent and searched around for a few minutes for sticks suitable to hold it up. A few minutes later, he’d finished. Everything was much more difficult in the dark, and he wished he’d made Hamilton stop earlier when it was still dusk.

But there was nothing he could do about that now.

It was too wet for a fire and too dark to search for any sort of food. So Burr did the only thing he could. He shook Hamilton, who was slumped over his horse, awake again, and gently pulled him to the ground. The idiot attempted to protest at being manhandled, but his words were too slurred to be of any use. Burr lay down his coat and then Hamilton’s on top of Hamilton and they both crawled into the tent.

Lightning cracked and thunder boomed and the rain nailed down on their tent. But for now, they were at least a little drier. Burr shivered on his back and glanced at Hamilton. In the light of the lightning strikes, he could see how pale he looked. Heat radiated from him, and while Burr was grateful for this fact (it made sleeping in soaking wet clothes slightly more bearable) Hamilton was still shivering. Hamilton coughed and then gave a frustrated sigh. There was nothing Burr could do for him. They had no medicine. No fire. No light at all, actually. And no dry clothes.

Their silence stretched on into the night.

Neither of them slept. Even as the storm passed and only the occasional ‘pink’ of raindrops rolling from the treetops above hit their tent, still they lay there in silence, close enough to share the warmth they both needed.

And that’s when Alex asked him whether he was awake or not.

And of course, Burr was.

Alex sniffed down into his coat and muttered something irritably.

Burr shifted so that he was angled to look at him. “You’re sick.”

Another cough. “No,” Alex muttered. He paused and coughed again. “Yes.”

Burr sighed. “You were sick when we set out, weren’t you? That’s why Washington-”

“Burr, I’m fine,” Hamilton interrupted. He continued to cough and curl tighter in on himself

“You don’t sound fine.”

Another pause as Hamilton tried to come up with a response. “Yeah, well. I will be. It’ll pass.”

“Uh huh.” Burr frowned up at the inside of their tent. Alexander and he were not… well, they weren’t exactly friends, but they didn’t hate each other. Or Burr mostly didn’t. Sure he was exceedingly irritated that Hamilton had the job he wished he had but... at the moment he didn’t care about that.

On the other hand, he would not have chosen to go with Hamilton of his own intuition. It was only because Washington had ordered him to go that he found himself in this situation.

Despite this, Burr was glad he’d come.

Hamilton, being the stubborn pain in the neck he was, would probably have tried to ride through the night and ended up unconscious on the side of the road somewhere.

“Do you…/” Aaron started.

“Do I what?”

“Do you get sick often?”

For a long moment, Hamilton said nothing. “N-”

“Hamilton, if you try to lie to me again I will take back my coat.” This was a solid argument, Burr thought. Apparently, Hamilton agreed. They were freezing after all.

“Yes,” Hamilton said very quietly. “You know Madison? How he’s sick all the time?”

Burr frowned at the sudden change in subject. “Yeah?”

Hamilton shifted his position on the ground. “I make fun of him, ya know, but like I’m probably ill more often than he ever is…”

“Truly?”

“Yes.”

Burr digested this. Hamilton always had a tired look in his eyes. Burr assumed it was because they were in a war and everyone was exhausted. But maybe there was more…

Hamilton cleared his throat. “I… I don’t… I just sort of push through it. I’ve got too much to do to be ill. And I’ve been dealing with it since I was a teenager. I’m used to it.”

Burr murmured an acknowledgment.

Now that he’d gotten him talking, Alexander couldn’t seem to talk.

“When I was a boy, I was really sick. Like, they didn’t think we’d make it.”

“We?”

A long pause. Burr got the impression Hamilton had not intended to say that. He didn’t press Alexander and instead waited to see if he would continue. And eventually, he did.

“My mother and I,” he said quietly. “In the Caribbean, there isn’t medicine like there is here.”

Burr nodded, already knowing where this story was going to end up. “And she...?”

“She died,” Hamilton stated blatantly. He cleared his throat. “I got better and she didn’t.”

Burr wasn’t sure what to say. And maybe he didn’t need to say anything at all. He clenched his fists on nothing. His own parents had died years back. He knew what it was like. There was nothing anyone could say to make anything better.

Hamilton coughed again and when he was done, exhaled tiredly. “Anyway, all that to say, I wasn’t really the same after that.”

“I imagine not.”

After that, their conversation drifted to silence as exhaustion wore them down. They were cold and wet and on the hard forest floor, but it had stopped raining, and it was some ungodly hour of the night. Frankly, they ought to have gotten up and continued on their ride back to Washington. But Hamilton needed sleep, Burr thought. Shoot, Aaron needed sleep.

All the same, it was still rather shocking to wake up what felt like moments later to the sun rising.

Burr stirred, hearing Hamilton’s breath catch as he struggled to breathe normally. He could not possibly have slept well at all.

He sat up slowly, and Hamilton blinked at him, awake as well. He was haggard and thin and pale but did not look dangerously sick. A small smile curved Burr’s lips. “You look horrible.”

Hamilton rolled his eyes. “Well, you don’t look so awe inspiring yourself,” he muttered. Carefully sitting up, Hamilton leaned to the side to peer out of the tent. The morning was yellow and orange and much warmer than they could have hoped for. “We should keep going.”

Yes. This was true. Calculating, Burr looked Hamilton up and down. “Are you sure you’re-?”

“I’ll be fine, Burr,” Alexander sighed. A spark of irritation lit in his eyes. “I don’t need you to coddle me.”

Burr snorted. “I’m not. If I show back up with you looking like you went five rounds with Hercules, Washington will kill me.”

In the end, they did continue. They found a stream and washed their faces and Hamilton continued to cough every so often, but the night’s rest had done him good. He would be alright. Burr would make sure of it.

As they neared the campsite of their battalion, Hamilton shifted in his saddle anxiously. He did it every few minutes until Burr was reduced to rolling his eyes. He was a few steps behind him.

“Hamilton, has something stung your backside or do you have something to say?”

Alexander shot him back a mockingly irritable look. But this look changed quickly into an expression Burr had never seen on Hamilton’s face before. Nervousness. “Can I ask a favor of you?”

Burr raised an eyebrow. “Depends on the favor.” He forced the horse up to walk side by side with him through the auburn trees.

Hamilton shrugged. “Just… don’t tell anyone. About what I said last night.”

“About being sick all the time? Hamilton, I am not going to risk your health for your pride-”

“That’s not what I mean,” Alexander interrupted. “I just don’t want… I don’t want pity.”

Pity. Yes, he could see that being something Hamilton would hate. In fact, Burr would hate it just as much. He shrugged. “Well, you will not be getting any pity from me.”

Hamilton chuckled. “I know. That’s like, the one thing I like about you.”

“The one thing.”

Hamilton nodded, smiling. “Yup. Or, I mean, your coat was pretty nice last night too, so I guess that’s a point in your favor.”

“What do you know? I’m moving up in the world,” Burr deadpanned. Hamilton just snickered. It was obvious he found great pleasure in needling Burr.

They continued riding in silence, each rocking with the rhythm of their horses.

As the neared the camp and the sound of male ruckus filled their ears, Burr caught Hamilton’s eye. “Your secret is safe.”

He received a grateful nod in return.

In the end, Burr kept his promise. He did not tell anyone else about Hamilton’s frequent illnesses. If the man wanted privacy, then it was not Burr’s place to deny him it.

But Burr was aware now. He watched Hamilton and he noted the days he was better or worse. If Hamilton happened to end up with a slightly larger food portion on days when he looked worse, no one could trace it back to Burr. But Hamilton would always look up and lock eyes with him and give that same nod of grudging thanks, and Burr would return the nod. Hamilton knew where those strange little blessings came from and though he’d be hard pressed to say it out loud, he was exceedingly grateful for Aaron Burr.

Years later, it was only when Burr stopped noticing when Alexander was sick that Hamilton realized just how far they’d drifted apart.

[bejaermi]

Two Mondays ago Jemele Hill from ESPN was suspended for asking fans to boycott the advertisers of the Dallas Cowboys. Her tweet was in response to a new rule made by the Cowboys and Jerry Jones, who two weeks before kneeled with his team in solidarity and then did a reversal and announced he’d fire/suspend any player who kneeled during the National Anthem. Jones’s actions have now spurred a debate between owners who are conflicted over what rules to place on a league that is almost 80 percent black. [1] Like many others Jemele was upset the owner of the richest franchise in the NFL would respond so harshly to his players exercising their first amendment rights. So she went to Twitter and told people to stop buying Dallas Cowboys merchandise.

Then in response to another tweet she said fans should go further and boycott the advertisers and sponsors of the Cowboys.

For this ESPN suspended her citing that she had violated their social media policy. Seeing that they were fine with (mostly) men attacking her on her Twitter feed and saying nothing, so it seems suspect to many that now ESPN is concerned about Hill’s social media account. Unless you remember that ESPN is an actual company, and Jemele Hill is only an employee. Oh and she’s a black woman.

Hill did not start this war, she’s merely a casualty, along with Colin Kaepernick. The title of shitstarter belongs to our 45th president who, has not passed any major legislation in the last 9 months, and decided to stir up an imaginary controversy to accost the NFL and its players. The outward reasons for this war are unclear, and are only a blip in the line of idiotic things this president has done in the last year. #45 loves conflict. Whether it’s John McCain, a Gold Star Family, or little Marco Rubio, Donald J. Trump likes to stir the pot. And now that he’s commander-in-chief he owns the big spoon. As for definitive reasons on why Trump talked about Kaepernick and called him a son-of-a-bitch is anyone’s guess. Only #45 really knows why he did it. Critics have speculated that as president he’s getting back at his enemies in a way he never could before. (Trump’s hatred and/or jealously of the NFL goes all the way back to the 1980s when he was the owner of the USFL New Jersey Generals and sued the NFL for anti-trust violations.)[2] Maybe he said what he said because he needed a diversion when he spoke to the great people of Alabama, (where he was campaigning for Luther Strange, but instead campaigned for himself and possibly the 2020 election),would love to hear. Or he was just his usual Queens, NY self [3] and used a person of color as a shield so his constituency wouldn’t see that he’s clueless when it comes to how to run the country.

  Again, no one knows for sure, but the fact is that on September 23rd, Trump declared war on the players of the NFL, especially Colin Kaepernick, whom though he didn’t mention directly, the implication was crystal clear. Trump then went further and distorted what Kaepernick and other players were doing. Telling the audience that they were disrespecting the flag and shitting on America.

  “That’s a total disrespect of our heritage. That’s a total disrespect of everything that we stand for…Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, you’d say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now Out! He’s fired!’ “[4]

  The roar of the crowd is deafening, then the chants of “USA! USA! USA!”,  start. Trump, in his candy cane colored tie and his dark untailored suit smiles like a triumphant svengali. He walks back and forth, throwing his hands in the air, as though telling imaginary political aides, “See, I told you, they’re like putty in my hands.”  Trump then walks back to the podium ready to sort of help Luther Strange. Whom everyone knows has taken a huge backseat to the omnibus that is Donald Trump and a Trump rally. [5] He was never there to help Luther anyway, he barely knew who Luther was. He just wanted the roaring cheers from the crowd and the soundbites that he knew would make the Evening News. Trump took a small issue that was really only discussed by sports journalists, black folks, and stalwart football fans and made it a national story filled with angst and hate against players who are just demonstrating their first amendment rights.

  President Trump may understand that there is a constitution, but he doesn’t like the parts that give citizens rights, except for the 2nd amendment. Protests are and will always be part of the American fabric. But protests are meant to be confrontational, they are meant to disturb and disrupt. See the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Movement, and the Black Lives Matter Movements. As a citizen, Trump, like Jemele Hill and Colin Kaepernick, has the right to speak his mind on the NFL. But why would a president insert himself into what is simply a labor matter. No one asked him a question like they did President Obama when Skip Gates was arrested outside his home and what eventually lead to the “Beer Summit”,[6] Trump decided to get his constituents riled up against some black boys, albeit rich black boys, but black boys none the less. While we can all agree that Trump should be more worried about North Korea, we also have to concede, that he’s not the first person to suggest that Kaepernick be ostracized, nor is he even the first to suggest that kneeling should be prohibited. [7] But unlike Hue Jackson (coach of the Cleveland Browns) who has some skin in the game, Trump’s has no skin that is remotely near the game. What he does have is a mind  filled with bile and vitriol, and his words tend to infect anyone who believes them.

After the president spoke and the Dallas Cowboys knelt during the anthem, while their fans booed, and the Pittsburgh Steelers (except for Alejandro Villenueva) stayed in their tunnel instead of standing up for the anthem and Ray Lewis did his “half protest prayer.” Fans took to their social media sites and burned Kaepernick jerseys, Steelers paraphernalia and any item that had anything to with any player that dared to exert their first amendment rights.  Yells of , “Protest on your on time!” or “I will never support anyone who doesn’t support our troops or our flag!” were pasted on websites, Twitter and broadcast on the Evening News. These same “patriots”, also went online and added Mike Tomlin to an imaginary lists of  “no-good niggers”.[8] This is what a few moments of our president’s speech moves citizens to do, not only deny their fellow citizens their constitutional rights but creates hate tsunamis.

  Which brings us back to Jemele Hill.  Jemele[9] is no stranger to bringing her experiences and speaking her mind on issues that intersect social and sports issues. A lot of her writing and reporting is similar to that of Robin Givhan of the Washington Post, who interposes fashion with social issues and the feminist gaze, giving the reader a more nuanced and fuller look at what the fashion world really is. Jemele does the same thing. In 2005 she was the only black woman sports journalist working for a major newspaper. She’s paid her dues, she spent six years at the Detroit Free Press covering Michigan State sports, where she is also an alumni. Her opinion on Sheryl Swoopes coming out as lesbian was clearly based in a feminist gaze that analyzed sports while making room for a critique about rampant over masculinity,

“Sorry, but Swoopes’s coming-out doesn’t have enough shock value to make us learn anything. Lesbians don’t pose a threat and have a certain appreciation in a male-dominated culture. And sadly, the prevailing stereotypes of female athletes as lesbians will probably reduce Swoopes’s emotional admission to a raunchy, tasteless joke by the end of the week. The only way we’re going to address homophobia in sports is if Peyton Manning, the NFL’s MVP last season, makes a similar disclosure. Or Brett Favre. Or Michael Jordan.”[10]

She also compared the Barry Bonds drugging scandal with the invisible case against Lance Armstrong in 2006. She claimed that race was instrumental in the investigation, when it was clear there was as much circumstantial evidence against Armstrong as there was against Bonds.[11] (In an Oprah Winfrey 2013 interview, Lance Armstrong admitted to doping and had his tour de France championships taken from him. )[12] You only have to look at her Twitter feed every day especially the hour before she anchors ESPNs main Sportscenter at 6p every weeknight (with her co-host Michael Smith.) Many of the tweets are vulgar, misogynistic, and openly racist in nature, and most have almost nothing to do with her on-air performance.

  Many of the purveyors of “ill will” to Jemele are white men of all ages and from all across the country.  Jemele answers almost of all of the “well wishers” individually in order to let them know their ignorance and their vileness will not and has not deterred her from spreading her what she knows is right.[13] And like many women of color, Jemele learned what was right by learning from other women in her family. In Jemele’s case her grandmother.[14]

The vein of doing what was right and continuing to speak truth to power, last month Jemele called the president, “A White Supremacist.”

  She pissed off a lot of people. She also energized a lot of folks, especially black women.

But is Jemele’s statement true?  The President and his Press Secretary don’t agree. And as a result they were the first to call for Jemele’s dismissal from ESPN.

…but I think that’s one of the more outrageous comments anyone could make and certainly something that I think is a fireable offense by ESPN.

-Sarah Huckabee Sanders  9/15/17[15]

Why is the President worried about a sports journalist? The easy answer, because she dared to say anything negative against the President. This president has the thinnest skin of any president in modern history. Which is especially astounding since president #44 was the first black president, and #43 was the president who was in office when 9/11 happened. If those presidents took the criticism that was doled out to them, why can’t Trump. The only obvious reason is that Jemele is a black woman in a very white male profession. Like racism, misogyny is a problem that America doesn’t want to acknowledge exists. Yet if the Harvey Weinstein story is any indication, we’ll have to address it sooner than later. The critics, the media, even Trump’s aides are afraid to dig further into what Trump’s racial ideology is. They can’t stomach that their fellow citizens, maybe even family members, elected a bigot. Even his own aides don’t know. In Charlottesville when he waited until his third press conference to condemn white supremacists, no one was sure whether he was just ignorant, a white supremacist or white supremacist adjacent.

In the meantime Jemele kept being Jemele.  She continued to tweet about Insecure, defend herself against trolls, and comment on social issues that intersected with her job, covering sports. Her comments regarding the president only reiterated what much of the President’s own cabinet is saying about him. (Rex Tillerson thinks his boss is a fucking moron like many of us do. A statement that Tillerson later refused to dignify with an answer, which means of course that he said it.)[16] After she called the president a white supremacist and she went to the president of ESPN and cried in his office explaining that she never meant to bring shame to the company or to her colleagues. She wasn’t admitting she existed wrong (because she’s entitled to her opinion, especially when it’s right), but she was doing what so many women of color do, recognizing an error in her delivery, but not in the substance. The way you know that your ex-husband is an asshole, you will continue to treat him like one, but you probably shouldn’t call him an asshole in front of your children.

But as her tweeting continued, NFL players had started kneeling in larger

numbers. Where her  first tweets had been born in response to Trump’s actions regarding Charlottesville, Trump’s tweets were now targeted at Jemele and how she had single handedly brought down ESPN rating. The ball was now in Jemele’s court, repsonding was never a question. The question was would her bosses have her back this time? Trump  was making statements about sports and how sports management should be carried out.  How could she resist taking him on? She’s a journalist, who has written for ESPN.com, was a sports journalist with “His and Hers,” has battled with many of the best sports writers and reporters and has held her own. She’s not merely eye candy,  the way some women sportcasters are displayed though she is incredibly attractive, has a fabulous hair/makeup team and dresses fiercely when she’s on the screen, she is the real deal. A Michigan State alumni who is a fierce Spartan fan, she can hang with the “boys” on predictions, fantasy football rankings, what an injury report can mean, and what a football formation looks like. (Yes, Cam Newton, there are actually women who know football, can wear a knee high boot, and win the sports pool.) [17] Jemele is the culmination of what happens when a young black woman decides to combine the social realities of the US with sports. She sees and understand the juncture of both and as a result she takes the mantle from male journalists like Mike Lupica, Jimmy Breslin, and William Rhoden and puts a spin on sports stories that show that the political is always personal. Trump had just made his quips and nonsense political statements personal.

  After his infamous Alabama speech,  the NFL showed a rare and swift sense of brotherhood and solidarity; by protesting against a micromanaging president who had no business trying to control them. The shows of owners and their teams kneeling, linking arms, and some not showing up at all were remarkable, if not exactly authentic. It wasn’t as if any of the owners were going to hire Kaerpernick while giving the president the proverbial middle finger. In fact, CK was almost forgotten in the two weeks after the president’s comment. Instead message became, “either honor the flag the right way or take your privileged ass somewhere else.” The term that was on many of my threads were “Oppressed Millionaires.” As though black millionaires were immune to the brutalism and microagressions that occur in America. Ask the Seattle Seahawks, at least four of their players have been stopped, detained or arrested by police for no reason.[18]

While Charlottesville was the impetus for Jemele’s first tweet, her second tweet to boycott the Cowboy’s sponsors was tied to  the backpedaling of the NFL. As of a week ago rumors were flying that the NFL was going to suspend or fine those who didn’t stand for the Star Spangled Banner. Then Jerry Jones not only backpedaled he did a somersault and said he would fire anyone who did not honor the flag or the fans. Is anyone really surprised that Jerry Jones did that? (I was more surprised he was kneeling.) Dallas Cowboys merchandise is the number one merchandise sold in the NFL shop. The Steelers, Patriots, Raiders, and 49ers are some of the other the other teams that bring millions of dollars to the owners who receive amlost all of the proceeds from those sales. Jones also backslided because the viewership and the attendance for NFL games have slipped significantly. And the lukewarm response from owners, Roger Goddell and the NFL towards scandals like the CTE coverup, deflated footballs and explicit cheating, domestic abuse, and Colin Kaepernick have made the public leary of the NFL. The public is choosing to watch repeats of Everyone Loves Raymond and the Golden Girls over the boring games that come on every Sunday night with Al Michaels and Chris Collinsworth. Jones and his fellow owners are worried. They have huge stadiums paid by taxpayers, they are their own economic tsunamis and if they lose public approval they are dead. What to do? Well take the side of the president of course.

ESPN is a company that has chosen not to examine Trump’s ideology beliefs, but instead to take the middle ground. Instead they decided to take the pussy way out and stand by their money.  Specifically they supported their advertisers and sponsors more than they did the anchor of their flagship show. a sponsor stance. There was no way that they could lose their major sponsors on their main sportscast of the day. Men came home from work to just sit in front of Sportscenter, possibly with their hands down the front of the their pants, but we can’t know for sure. The last thing that these Bud drinking, Stihl having, John Deere mowing, and Ford F-150 driving would tolerate seeing is a black woman talking about politics with their sports.  They still haven’t accepted that Jemele Hill has the job she has, now she wants them to think too? And the sponsors jumped at the chance to not take a side and instead threatened to pull their ads unless action was taken.  But one of the tipping points were the ESPN employees themselves.

If there were many ESPN employees in agreement with Jemele, it was hard to find one in the tweets and emails that were “leaked” to the press. Many of Jemele’s colleagues  were upset about what Jemele said and wanted some kind of discipline put on her. Many referred to other journalists who had been fired or “phased out” after they used words and references that were out of bounds and none of them were to the president. But ESPN has never been consistent when disciplining their journalists, Bill Simmons was disciplined when he spoke out against Roger Goddell, but Colin Cowherd wasn’t disciplined when he spoke out against Sean Taylor.[19] I’m not sure how ESPN can continue to keep up the façade of neutrality when they pay their journalist to also be commentators and opinion makers. What do you think the NFL Insiders on NFL countdown are? They may know the game, but they (Chris Mortensen, Louis Riddick, and Adam Schefter) get their information from the various NFL Deep Throats and reporting that “news” as fact. They are like the Hot Topics bunch on Wendy Williams.

And while ESPN has suspended Jemele, the NBA has not suspended Greg Popovitch, LeBron James, and Stephen Curry for their free speech about the President. Nor has the NFL (and now according to Roger Goddell they won’t) fine/suspend any of the players (current or former) who have kneeled in the past or will kneel in the future. (That’s good news for Ray Lewis, he won’t have to pretend kneel this time.) Other men have also come out for Jemele, black male sportcasters of the NABJ have come out in support of Jemele.  Mike Lupica wrote that Jemele has the right to speak her truth at ESPN. Dave Zirin has been a staunch supporter of Jemele’s writing pieces and arguing on Twitter about Jemele’s right to free speech.

Jemele felt that was inexcusable and said so. ESPN had already changed face and suspended her, for what they felt was insubordination. Yet other white male sportscasters had also called for a boycott and decried the stomping of players rights.[20]In fact many journalists had called for a boycott of the entire season, citing all the problems the NFL had including Kaepernick. But none of those writers were fired, suspended or disciplined. Again, what does Jemele have that many of the sports journalists don’t?

Let me say it loud so those in the cheap seats can hear it.

She’s a black woman.

Jemele is a persecuted woman of color, more specifically she is a black woman speaking truth to power. US history is clear about what happens to black women when they choose to speak truth to power, they are continually tormented and abused until they bend, and sometimes then break. Look up Ida B. Wells, Fannie Lou Hamer. Shirley Chisolm. Look at the women who started and continue to maintain the Black Lives Matter movement. And of course they tried to make our former first lady bend as well.

Michelle[21] was supposed to sit behind Barack and say nothing. The last first lady who had an agenda and didn’t know how to bake cookies was Hilary Clinton, and that ended very badly. Go Google, “Michelle Obama insults,” and the results are horrifying. Make sure your children aren’t in the room, because it won’t be pretty. The mild insults are about her wearing shorts, going on long trips, or wearing fancy clothes. The worse ones are when the white men of the senate told her to put her arms in some sleeves for the formal portrait.  Or when governors, city directors and other “government officials” around the country sent pictures of an ape and in one instance called it “A ape in heels.” Or when a washed up television star posted a picture that said, “He (President Obama) wakes up to this?[22] This rage and hate was aimed at a first lady whose national agenda was for children to eat well, and the Republicans said, “Bring back the French fries and chicken nuggets!”

Michelle, Serena, Viola, and Jemele also have to navigate gender. What I haven’t seen is feminist groups come out in support of Jemele and her right to free speech. Where are the white women, besides Samantha Bee? Why aren’t prominent white women standing up for Jemele? In recent years white women have done some dumb things and have advernnatly or inadvertently scrubbed women of color (in this case black women) from spaces  because they feel ignored and devalued. With Sophia Vergara being the highest paid television actress at the moement, white women may be feeling very vulnerable. Remember Patricia Arquette’s speech (that Jennifer Lopez inexpicably stood up for) that spoke of how ungrateful other folks were for the work white women did for them  and how now white women have to look out for themselves?[23] Or the dismissal of Viola’s speech at the 2015 Emmys about inequality and lack of roles for women that a soap opera actress with no accolades even close to Viola’s felt was silly and hallucinatory. Or Maria Sharapova’s recent story of Serena Williams calling her a bitch and how terrible Serena was (during the time the story had been about Serena’s new baby), when she conveniently for the terrible drag impression she did of Serena with padding that gave her a huge butt and enormous breasts. Or the idea that Ellen would create a Halloween costume of Nicki Minaj and her cotume consisted of a large ass and a bad wig. Is this solidarity? Or the silence from groups like NOW during the 2008 presidential campaign when right-wingers were calling Michelle Obama a radical black panther because of a fist bump with her husband and her Princeton senior thesis that was pro-black in nature. Or the criticism that came when Michelle said she was going to be “Mom-in-Chief” for a while in order to get her children acclimated to the white house and their new school. White women excoriated her for choosing to be a mother first, forgetting that the whole purpose of feminism is to give women choices, whether those choices are popular or not are inconsequential. And forgetting or ignoring the intersectionality that shows that for black women, staying home and not going into bankruptcy while doing it,was a radical event.

So why shouldn’t the Michelle Obamas, Serena Williamses, Viola Davises and Jemele Hills shout out loud about the inequality they see in their nation? And again why would the President of the United States care?

ESPN’s slow response to suspend Jemele was not because they were feeling benevolent or because they see Jemele Hill as irreplaceable. They were slow to make a decision because they were in a quandary. How to discipline Jemele without looking like racists and a misogynists. Could they do what they had done to Sage Steele the year before[24] and make her disappear into a vortex? No, she had spoken about the  president. ESPN hoped all of it would just disappear. It didn’t. This is Donald Trump, the most thin skinned President in modern history the White House couldn’t let it go. So they had to wait and see what happened. And Jemele kept being Jemele and ESPN finally had their opening to suspend her and if all reports are correct her contract won’t be renewed.

So who will talk about what’s right in the sportworld? Jason Whitlock, Stephen A Smith, Bomani Jones? Their columns and on air responses have run from super conservative and misogynist (Whitlock) to non committal and dismissive (Smith). What will we as sports fan lose if we lose Jemele? What will black women lose? But the person who has truly been lost in all of this is Colin Kaepernick. Remember him? How will any of this get him his job back? Can he afford to wait on others to help him or does he have to take the owners and the NFL on and fight for himself.  We’ll find out, on October 16, 2017, Kaepernick filed a lawsuit against the NFL and its owners. Claiming that the owners colluded to keep him out of the NFL and without a job because he used his 1st amendment right.

It seems Kaepernick has decided to use his 7th amendment right, the right to have a jury of your peers in a civil case over 20.00.

It’s about time.

  *************************************************************************************

  [1] https://theundefeated.com/features/the-nfls-racial-divide/

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/donald-trumps-long-stormy-and-unrequited-romance-with-the-nfl/2017/09/23/979264a4-a093-11e7-8ea1-ed975285475e_story.html?utm_term=.d7a4b6cd0b0e  Trump won the case against the NFL, but the court determined that the USFL was imploded on it’s own. Trump won $1.00. But since you earn triple earnings in anti-trust proceedings, he received, $3.00.

[3] No offense to Queens, NY

[4] https://youtu.be/vrW-GI_9IL8

[5] Luther Strange loses his bid to be re-elected despite Trump coming to save him.  Trump later tells the media, “I guess I backed the wrong guy.”

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Louis_Gates_arrest_controversy

[7] Hue Jackson, the coach of the Cleveland Browns isn’t a fan of NFL players protesting, http://www.sportingnews.com/nfl/news/browns-coach-hue-jackson-against-national-anthem-protest-patriotism/1lrihp1r2yv7710y7olb8equrs

[8] http://www.theroot.com/fire-chief-says-pittsburgh-nfl-coach-mike-tomlin-added-1818808004

[9] From this point, I’m just going to refer to Jemele Hill as Jemele. That’s how us black folks do. She’s in distress and I don’t have time to be formal.

[10] http://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/jemele_hill_on_being_black_fem.php

[11] http://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/jemele_hill_on_being_black_fem.php

[12] http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/15/health/armstrong-ped-explainer/index.html

[13] https://theundefeated.com/features/jemele-hill-on-doing-the-right-thing/

[14] I too learned from the women in my family and have heard this same refrain from may of the women of color who are successful and speak truth to power.

[15] https://ww.si.com/tech-media/2017/09/13/sarah-huckabee-sanders-tells-press-jemele-hill-should-lose-job-over

[16] http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/15/tillerson-trump-moron-castration-243785

[17] http://time.com/4970126/cam-newton-jourdan-rodrigue-routes/

[18] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/seahawks-michael-bennett-says-police-officer-held-gun-to-his-head/

[19] In 2011 Colin Cowherd made a statement about the recently deceased Washington Redskins player that not on besmirsched his character, but insinuated that because he was black and was in trouble with the law it’s no surprise that he’s dead. Cowherd made a small non-apology but was not disciplined.

In 2014, Bill Simmons one of ESPNs biggest sports journalists was suspended because of his remarks against Roger Goddell during the Ray Rice tape incident. Simmons called Goddell a liar and was suspended for 3 weeks.

[20] https://www.thenation.com/article/nfl-owners-and-espn-bosses-are-showing-which-side-they-are-on/

[21] I was going to say Shelly, but she was the FLOTUS. So I’ll just keep it to first names. Just like Jemele. They’re all my besties in my head.

[22] http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37985967

[23] http://variety.com/2015/film/news/patricia-arquette-comments-oscars-2015-controversy-1201439814/

[24] Steele lost her coveted post for ESPN’s NBA Countdown when she made derogatory statements about the protesters fighting the president’s travel and how it was forcing her to be late for her flights. She has since been moved to Sportscenter on the Road one of ESPN level B shows. )

Sistahs, Brothas, and Presidents Two Mondays ago Jemele Hill from ESPN was suspended for asking fans to boycott the advertisers of the Dallas Cowboys.