June 22, 2019

On That Gay Flex Again

1 hour 8 minutes

As tennis transitions to grass, we're scrambling to catch up on the post-Roland Garros results, beefs, surprises, and clunky, poorly conceived solutions to ongoing problems. Barty is steps away from the no. 1 ranking, Berrettini eases onto the turf, Felix's rise continues unabated. Since it's Pride Month, we're giving a mini-reprise of last year's Pride episode: looking at the difference between genuine allyship and tokenism, how capital subsumes real LGBTQ issues, and what Taylor Swift has to do with it.

2:00 ATP retroactively counting Laver Cup matches in head-to-heads ... huh?

5:50 A thought experiment on alternative ranking systems

16:00 A propos of nothing, the US Open says they want to allow coaching during matches, delighting Patrick Mouratoglous everywhere

24:45 Grass results: Garcia wins, Vekic gets frustrated, Berrettini & Felix take to the grass

31:30 More grass: Venus charms in Birmingham, Barty eases into the grass season, Sir Andrew Murray returns!

36:35 WTA finally acknowledges its LGBTQ fans

42:30 Marco Trungelliti blows the whistle on match fixing, gets trashed by fellw players

46:00 What Jonathan is mad about: Sania Mirza getting blamed for the Pakistani cricket team's loss

51:20 Discussion: how to feel about the proliferation of corporate Pride branding? What is for-profit queerness? Do we risk straight people co-opting and blunting the force of queer politics? You know, really laidback stuff like that.

...more