Not surprising that I wasn't thrilled to see Dominic Thiem prematurely exit from yet another Grand Slam event. But it's even more disheartening to find out that I can't even be happy for the American who outplayed him -- 26-year-old Tennessee native Tennys Sandgren -- because he seems to live up to every horrible "straight white Christian" male stereotype of a Trump voter.
\
You'll cringe when you read this exchange about racism with Dustin Brown and James Blake, who last year took the highest road possible to settle a dispute with the NYPD after an officer with a history of force complaints roughed him up during the 2015 U.S. Open. (Instead of suing, Blake got the city to agree to create a legal fellowship in his name within the agency that investigates police misconduct.)
Perhaps even more disturbing to me is that I found out that Ryan Harrison isn't very bright either, bitching about NFL players who kneel during the National Anthem. (If only his brain were a fraction of the size of his ass.) You can do better than this, United States. Isn't John Isner's MAGA lifestyle enough horror for one tennis fan?
Read how Sandgren -- who hates the media, finds the alt-right "interesting" and espouses the conspiracy theory that connected Hillary Clinton to human trafficking and child abuse (he fucking believes PIZZAGATE) -- tried to squirm away from questions about his white-nationalist-adjacent Twitter feed during a post-match press conference HERE.
So Sandgren thinks the U.S. can't be racist because it elected a black president. He forgot to say "What about black-on-black crime?" -- although I'm sure it's next ...
From HERE.
I wonder what it is about her that makes him so angry. Something tells me he doesn't get this worked up when other players carry on pumping themselves up ...
Get it?
From HERE.
From HERE.
From HERE.
UPDATE: Good for Deadspin for weighing in on this. It's way past time time we hold people accountable for their conspiracy-theory-believing nonsense and stop the normalization of this crap. Read HERE.
UPDATE 2: By Tuesday morning, all of Sandgren's tweets since June 2016 appeared to have been deleted so that his most recent was a message celebrating Brexit, the irony of which appeared to be lost on him.
Jarmere Jenkins, Serena Williams's hitting partner, then took to Twitter to vouch for Sandgren's not being racist -- never mind the fact that one of Sandgren's tweets was aggressively against Serena. (I responded by asking if he could vouch for his sanity, because anyone who believes Pizzagate is clearly nuts.)
Then by midnight, ALL of his tweets were gone, which I guess means "Tennys lesson over," at least for now. For anyone who thinks people are being "too hard" on this guy, no. We've let these conspiracy theorists distort reality for the past 18 months and enough is enough. If he has differing political views, that's fine. But why should anyone sit by and let a public figure spew this constant bullshit without holding him to account?
UPDATE 3:
I had hoped that by deleting his past tweets Sandgren was looking to take responsibility for his unseemly past. But as Republicans often do, he's instead decided to double-down, blaming the media for his behavior, a la Donald. Read HERE.
UPDATE 4:
He's baaaaaaaaaaaaack! But at least this time he's not blaming the media for noticing how horrible he is -- he's actually apologizing.
UPDATE 3:
I had hoped that by deleting his past tweets Sandgren was looking to take responsibility for his unseemly past. But as Republicans often do, he's instead decided to double-down, blaming the media for his behavior, a la Donald. Read HERE.
UPDATE 4:
He's baaaaaaaaaaaaack! But at least this time he's not blaming the media for noticing how horrible he is -- he's actually apologizing.
