Meanwhile at the Galt's Gulch Municipal Tennis Courts and Miniature Golf Complex

Nick Gillespie | September 4, 2006

Over at Slate, June Thomas serves up a consideration for tennis great Billie Jean King, with this one caveat:

My devotion wobbled on a few occasions--when she suggested in one of her autobiographies that we Brits were destined for tennis mediocrity because our dependency on the welfare state rendered us unsuited to the individualistic demands of the sport; or when she put me through months of misery by naming Atlas Shrugged as her favorite book. But this was a crush that endured long after my other adolescent passions faded.

At the start of this year's U.S. Open, the United States Tennis Association named its HQ after King. Whole thing here.

Official U.S. Open site and results here.

Back in 2003, Reason named another tennis standout, Martina Navratilova, one of our "35 Heroes of Freedom," noting, "As the first superstar athlete to admit she was gay and the first woman to play tennis like a man, Martina did more than inspire movies like Personal Best; she smashed stultifying stereotypes like so many poorly hit lobs." The whole list--certainly the only ranking to include the Czech refugee, Margaret Thatcher, Willie Nelson, and Robert Heinlein (among others), is online here.

And back in 2005, Reason Contributing Editor Cathy Young took the measure of "Ayn Rand at 100" and the staff compiled "Rand-O-Rama," snippets from the past half-century that testify to the controversial novelist's astonishingly "long shelf life in American culture." Check both out here.

Cheap tennis-related fashion trivia that everyone probably knows: It's a crocodile, not an alligator, on "alligator shirts" from Izod-Lacoste.

Cheaper logrolling for Reason stories about unauthorized culture: A shout-out to JC Penney's old "fox shirts"--the perfect complement to a pair of "plain pocket jeans" for a family on a budget--and the triumph of vulgarity here and here, respectively.

Comments

|9.4.06 @ 11:09AM|#

That's funny 'cuz, when you think about it, Bobby Riggs more of a Rand character that Jean.

|9.4.06 @ 1:58PM|#

Meanwhile at the Galt's Gulch Municipal Tennis Courts and Miniature Golf Complex

Not to be pedantic in any manner but if it were actually a municipal (local government) facility, who would have gotten got to name it? Unusually enlightened bureaucrats? Perhaps a private contributor?

Brits were destined for tennis mediocrity because our dependency on the welfare state rendered us unsuited to the individualistic demands of the sport

Interesting. The mass psychology effect of welfare state does tend to weaken individual initiative of a portion the population. States can make up for this, only within the narrow confines of certain endeavors, by sponsoring or subsidizing those endeavors.

It's understood that an effect isn't always the result of the hypothesized cause; but over the years hasn't British tennis indeed lost some of its preeminence? So perhaps BJK served up an ace with this contention.

|9.4.06 @ 3:18PM|#

Is there a whole libertarian lesbian sub-culture that I am unaware of?

And don't give me crap similar to the whole deadwood democrates which is just so much hot air.

|9.4.06 @ 3:28PM|#

"Is there a whole libertarian lesbian sub-culture that I am unaware of?"

It seems to be more like an Objectivist lesbian sub-culture, but yes -- almost every woman I've met who is a fan of Ayn Rand's writing is also a lesbian. Why, I don't claim to know, given Rand's antipathy toward homosexuality.

|9.4.06 @ 3:41PM|#

joshua,

Well, there's the very intersting, (look into her books) Camille Paglia. She certainly has libertarian leanings.

From this interview with Reason:

http://reason.com/9508/PAGLIA.aug.shtml

"Interview with the Vamp
Why Camille Paglia hates affirmative action, defends Rush Limbaugh, and respects Ayn Rand"

I consider myself not a conservative libertarian but a radical '60s libertarian.

|9.4.06 @ 3:50PM|#

SR:

almost every woman I've met who is a fan of Ayn Rand's writing is also a lesbian.

Really? That certainly hasn't been my experiance. There are so many female Rand fans.

BTW, are you the same SR who wrote about Elaine Pagels here a while ago?

ed|9.4.06 @ 4:00PM|#

Rand's antipathy toward homosexuality.


Examples, SR?
Rand regarded homosexuality as a psychological disorder. I doubt she hated gays.

By the way, all the female Rand fans of my acquaintance are red-blooded heteros. But I can understand how strong-willed lesbians might be attracted to her philosophy of rugged, reason-based individualism. Especially the bull dikes. I doubt they get it, but that's another topic.

|9.4.06 @ 4:15PM|#

From the Reason Camille Paglia interview:

http://reason.com/9508/PAGLIA.aug.shtml

However, I do believe that capitalism is inherently Darwinian and that a totally free market is ultimately inhumane, because you'll have what happened in the 19th century--a kind of piling up of profits at the very top, with working-class people falling way below. I do think that there should be some kind of safety net, that we should not tolerate, in an affluent society, extreme levels of poverty or deprivation.

yuck...i swear it is as if the left has never walked into a Fred Meyer or a Walmart...i mean everything in there is purchasable by the poor huddled masses...do they honestly belive that such a multitude of prosparity is a product of the preogressivism in the early to mid 20th century?

That somehow social security and the WAC created middle class consumerism?

I am not against "some sort of safety net", but if you are going to have one you should be fully aware of the tendancy for mission creep and unintended consiquenses...which from her outlining of how feminism and affermitive action have mutated into government bucks for white woman program she should be fully aware of this...but isn't. Instead she makes an ackward and unsubstaniated claim that safety nets created the middle class. wierd.

Anyway everything else I seemed to like...well exept that thing about 14 years having consenual sex with adults. 16 seems like a good min to me. Anything lower makes you out to be a big sicko. :)

|9.4.06 @ 4:57PM|#

joshua,

Yep, that really is yucky. She's better for attacking the left than defending liberty cuz her defense of liberty is selective. Also, she's way misinformed in that paragraph.

I am not against "some sort of safety net",

I am, if it's a government "safety net". But private, voluntary ones are fine.

|9.4.06 @ 5:02PM|#

Yep, that really is yucky" - Just to be clear, I was referring to the passage that you quoted, not he age of consent stuff.

|9.4.06 @ 8:19PM|#

Are you implying Bille Jean King is a lesbian?