ESPN's Arthur Ashe Courage Award and the dropped ball

[*jason*]

(06-04-2015, 10:41 AM)xxlt Wrote: Saw a lot of this talk on FB this morning. Saw some similar comments about Jenner not connected to the Ashe Award but questioning her courage. It all seemed like thinly veiled hate too me. Note: I am not accusing the OP in this thread of that, but what I saw on FB was coming off as hate disguised as something else.

As to who is more deserving of an award, I think it is maybe not a question worth arguing, especially when it isn't MVP which you can actually look at stats and argue. I mean with an award like this; "courage" is a pretty subjective thing.

And ESPN is a bastion of terrible people and decisions, I will agree with the OP on that.

But, with no disrespect to Lauren Hill and her supporters, there are Laurens around the US with families and friends rallying around them and some get some media exposure and some don't. Some want it, some don't. The fact there was a social media campaign rallying around her makes her no more a "shill" than the fact Jenner did an interview makes her one.

Also, let's be honest. If you are a celebrity and the world is going to be talking about you anyway would you rather just be splashed all over media and get nothing from it or would you try to make a buck? Most people would say, hey, if the paparazzi are coming and I am going to be headline and late night talk fodder I might as well try to make some money. I feel like anyone who says otherwise is being kind of dishonest.

Name a celebrity. Name an athlete. Does either person you just named need more money? No, but they continue to work, get paid, yada yada yada. But somehow Jenner is a POS for trying to make money? Seems kind of like a double standard to me.

Lauren wasn't rich, I suppose. Does that make her more deserving than Leah Still or some other kid with cancer who plays ball somewhere who is rich? That point seems irrelevant. More of you have heard of Lauren than Mary Jane Ijustmadethisnameup from Possum Trot, Mississippi but maybe Mary Jane was just as courageous and just as deserving and maybe everybody in Possum Trot knows that story. Would people be running to protest if MJ got the award over "our Lauren?" Again, doesn't seem like the hill I want to go to battle for.

Ashe, for whom the award is named, was a pioneer and a symbol whether he wanted to be or not and he conducted himself with class. So far, I see a parallel with Jenner. She is a pioneer and could hardly have done what she did in secrecy, so she was going to be a symbol and a lightning rod whether she wanted to or not. And so far she is doing it with class. And hers is a story impacting a whole lot of people, so on the scale of influence I would say her story is bigger than any other "contender" for the award, and all that together I think makes the choice to give her the award pretty appropriate.

Why exactly couldn't Jenner have done what she did in secrecy?  She's only in the limelight for the last few years because she chose to be.  Hell he could have even married into that goofy family, and recused himself from that show.  Cameras and media aren't following Dorothy Hamill around.  I remember seeing Johnny Rotten in an interview discussing Kurt Cobain's suicide.  He said something along the lines of... If Kurt was so sick of being a star and the pressure that goes with it, all he had to do was stop being one.