Larry Ellison

Source: Bigstock

My old friend and onetime doubles partner Ray Moore has stepped down as chief executive of the Indian Wells Tennis Tournament for telling the truth. As Rod Liddle wrote in The Spectator a couple of weeks ago, “There is nothing more damaging to a career than telling an unfortunate truth.” Ray Moore was a very good South African tennis player and is a very nice guy. He once partnered me to a final in a major tournament and we have stayed friends for forty years and more. The man who owns the Indian Wells tournament, multibillionaire Larry Ellison, is a pretty disgusting individual, who among many other horrors has also managed to ruin the America’s Cup by introducing ugly, mosquito-like high-tech catamarans, as likely to be sailed by the normal sailor as one is to swim up Niagara Falls.

All poor Ray did was say that women tennis players have ridden on the coattails of the men. Judging by the reactions—especially by the egregious New York Times—he might as well have said that male tennis players are better than the women. Moore apologized immediately following his outburst, but he was a goner. The first to attack was Martina Navratilova, a great player in her time, but one who would not have filled a small room with admirers because of her overt lesbianism in an era when men and women athletes were advised to keep their sexual proclivities to themselves.

At present, of course, being a lesbian is a plus, especially in sport and in Hollywood. All poor Ray Moore did was remind us that men are the big draws in tennis, and it’s because of people like Federer and Nadal that women take home very large checks, which they don’t earn on a level playing field. A level playing field and equal pay would be if women competed against men as well as women, and played best of five in Grand Slams. And before I forget, a man ranked 500 or even 1,000 will win Wimbledon every time if allowed to play against women. These truths we hold to be universal, at least for those of us who have played on the tennis tour, but try telling this to the moronic whiners who make a living by perennial outrage.

So a good man loses his livelihood because of the professional busybodies who look for racism and sexism, and the tour goes on. PC lives, and it will get worse. Maria Sharapova is caught doping and her team of defenders goes into overdrive. She no more has a history of diabetes and heart problems than I have a history of self-denial, but smart lawyers will get her a good deal or my name is Roy Emerson. And speaking of that great Aussie who won twelve Grand Slams, last year was the fiftieth anniversary of his first Wimbledon victory. So what did the BBC do? It instructed the saccharine Clare Balding to commemorate instead Arthur Ashe’s fortieth anniversary of his Wimbledon victory, his single one. I never knew that a fortieth anniversary takes precedence over a fiftieth one, but then I’m not politically correct. Ashe was black and Emerson white, so nonstop encomiums for Ashe were the order of the championships.

Yep, this is how it goes, and I hope a know-nothing PC slave by the name of Harvey Araton who just about demanded Ray Moore be fired can keep his job at the N.Y. Times a bit longer in order to help readers sleep more during the long hot summer coming up. The only good news is that the owner of Gawker, a slimy Brit in the slimiest of businesses, Nick Denton, got smacked for close to 150 million big ones—he’s personally responsible for only about 10 million—for showing a tape of Hulk Hogan having sex without his consent. Denton is an unpleasant man who thinks he has the right to look into other people’s private lives and moments in order to enrich himself. In France he would have ended up in jail long ago. In America he has become a celebrity and a multimillionaire. Strike a win for the good guys. The tape was in reckless disregard and with intent to harm the Hulk. Pay up, asshole.

Finally, the outrage in Brussels speaks for itself. I was flying out from Geneva at the same time the scum blew away innocent people, and I couldn’t help but think of how Belgium is a microcosm of the EU. Multiethnic, split between Dutch- and French-speaking people, corrupt, incompetent, and much too scared to open the can of worms that is Molenbeek, the section of Brussels the Belgian army and the cops are too scared to occupy and clean up. The Belgians are the biggest contributors per capita to jihad in Syria, yet the state welcomes them with open arms when they return. Like the EU, the Belgian government fears charges of racism more than ISIS terror. When the Paris suspect was arrested four days before the outrage, I watched on the news Muslim women and men screaming abuse at cops who were searching for him. This is Belgium. This is the EU. Enjoy the spring.