Serena Williams of the United States wipes her face during a break in play against Samantha Stosur of Australia during the Women's Singles Final on Day Fourteen of the 2011 US Open at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center on September 11, 2011 in the Flushing neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York City. (Photo by Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)Clive Brunskill/Getty Images
What a shame that she's given the worst of us comfort.
There's no excusing Serena Williams's meltdown in the women's singles final of the U.S. Open on Sunday, just as there was no excusing her eerily similar outburst on the same stage two years ago.
It wasn't just that she mouthed off at officials who had the temerity to make absolutely correct calls. (She was fined $2,000 (U.S.) on Monday for her outbursts.) That you can see in sport pretty much every day in an era of extraordinary tolerance for the temper tantrums of our pampered athletic heroes.
(Tune in to a English Premiership soccer match any Saturday, and watch referees having obscenities screamed in their faces from inches away and doing absolutely nothing: You don't have to pretend that those who won the genetic lottery are role models for impressionable youth to see something wrong in that.)
Williams's sin was compounded in both cases because it was a response to losing, to knowing she was in a match she couldn't dominate, that she was facing an opponent she couldn't control.
No, not all great athletes are gracious in defeat, but there's also a fine line between being so intensely competitive as to lose your marbles in the heat of battle, and losing your marbles as a way out of having to admit you've been fairly beaten.
In these two cases, it seemed the latter, which is extraordinarily unattractive.
But the really sad part here is how this will inevitably be twisted by those who never believed the Williams sisters "belonged" in tennis, who felt discomfort with them from Day 1, and who without denying their enormous achievements in the sport, can today whisper they were right all along.
This isn't just about race. Class is part of the equation too – the Williams sisters, growing up in Compton, Calif., were certainly not of the country club set. Their father and coach, Richard Williams, was and is a polarizing presence in his own right who happily battled the tennis establishment, made all kinds of grand pronouncements about his daughters' potential, saw most of those pronouncements come true, and never once felt the need to bow to authority.
But it is partly about race, because Serena and Venus Williams's position as second-generation barrier breakers, who are unafraid to push back. They followed the path charted by Arthur Ashe and Althea Gibson the way so many ballplayers followed the path of Jackie Robison, or boxer Muhammad Ali followed the path of Joe Louis, pioneers who suffered the slings and arrows of racists, by necessity, with quiet dignity and vast patience.
Ashe and Gibson made it possible for the Williams sisters to be themselves, which was a change from anything the sport had seen before.
They looked different than almost everyone they were competing against, they played differently, bringing a new level of power and athleticism to the women's game, they stood out, which some regarded as a triumph, and some certainly regarded as an affront.
Pretend that race isn't a factor all you want, pretend this is only a discussion about fair play and decorum, but it won't take long for the predictable opinions to start emerging out from under rocks in predictable places.
On Monday morning, Fox News host Gretchen Carlson wondered whether there were "racial undertones" to Williams's outburst – the umpire Williams went off on this time was white, while the linewoman that she berated two years ago was Asian-American – and suggested that this might be a case of the unchecked "entitled generation." (Compton being a noted breeding ground of entitlement.)
Serena Williams, who declined to apologize on Sunday, has invited the criticism, not just from the "haters" – as she labelled the umpire during her outburst – but from all kinds of people, including those who admired her, and felt terribly let down. Had the woman who defeated her in the match, and won her first Grand Slam title, Samantha Stosur of Australia, behaved similarly, she would have been similarly convicted in the court of public opinion.
But if it were her, no one would be talking in code on Fox News, any more than they were when John McEnroe was tearing a strip off tennis linesmen and umpires way back when.
No need to wonder why.