Background - To understand this story you need to become familiar with five characters: Caitlyn Jenner, ESPN, the ESPYS, US soldiers, and straight up idiot doobags.
Caitlyn Jenner is a lady who used to be a dude who was considered the world's greatest athlete by virtue of winning the decathlon at an Olympics before I was even born. Then she married and divorced like 47 women, the last of which was a Kardashian. After marrying into that shit show of a family she decided life is too short not to be the woman she was meant to be and has since come out as transsexual. Good for her.
ESPN is a elephantine sports broadcaster that is more interested in the TMZ aspect of sports than actual sports themselves, which makes sense since they broadcast 24/7 and the sports anyone actually wants to watch are prime time solamente, so what better way to while away the afternoon hours than by gossiping about men who dress in corny uniforms for a living.
The ESPY is a rando award given out at an awards show ESPN conceived as a sort of Oscars or Grammys of the sports world. Most human beings know what the Oscars are; like 155 people total know what an ESPY is.
US soldiers are members of the various branches of the US military. In public discourse they are thought of as a monolithic unit rather than as individuals, mostly to justify piss poor and shallow reasoning on controversial topics.
Idiot doobags are people who disagree with me.
The controversy that inspired a slew of idiotic memes and even more thoughtless opinions - Like a month and a half ago, ESPN announced they were awarding Caitlyn Jenner their Arther Ashe Courage Award for being all couragey and stuff. Great, yawn, next topic, except that's when every idiot doobag ever decided their delicate sensibilities had been so offended that they actually pretended to give a shit about some manufactured award given out by a cable company, as if it were the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Soon rumors circulated about more deserving runners up, and then once those were disproved - ESPN claimed there were no runners up - anyone with an OCD-grade impulse to forward or share anything they've ever seen online was forwarding or sharing dipshit memes about the tree in their backyard deserving a pretend courage award more than Caitlyn Jenner did. Over time those memes devolved from X deserves the award instead to That's not even courageous. In between was a whole lot of ewwwwww.
Eventually Caitlyn Jenner accepted her award, people mocked her voice - because of course they did - and then everyone moved on with their lives. The only reason I'm writing about it now is because anyone I know on Facebook who actually remembers Bruce Jenner winning a gold medal is still treading water in this putting on a dress isn't courage nonsense by continuing to post memes about Caitlyn Jenner, like this:
Explanations for why anyone who took issue with this whole non-issue is an idiot doobag - Let's break this down at the molecular level.
ESPN is responsible for conceiving this award, and ESPN is just a stupid enterprise all around - ESPN has the broadcast rights to numerous sports, and to generate more interest in those sports they put a bunch of failed Mitch Albom-types on TV and tell them to say stupid things - "He didn't want to win enough" passes for legitimate analysis on ESPN - since the typical guy who watches 17 hours of ESPN a day will tell you how much he hates ESPN commentary yet can't stop watching all their vacuous TV shows just because he likes being angry. The only break he takes from watching ESPN the channel is to get on ESPN the dot-com to read all the Tim Tebow articles ever published before complaining about all the Tim Tebow coverage. So it makes perfect sense that the bunch of doobags don't care what ESPN says because they can "think for themselves" all lost their shit over ESPN giving an arbitrary award to a person they're unwilling to accept as a perfectly normal human being.
At least those people actually watch ESPN - It's one thing to pretend you're legitimately invested in what ESPN has decreed by fiat to be the best play in all of sports, or the most miraculous upset, or any other non-consequential doodie, but at least they know what ESPN is. Better than all the perpetually aggrieved cake bakers who are absolutely aghast that a channel they won't let their husbands watch gave out a courage award. I mean, I've never been to Bozeman, Montana, nor have I ever thought about Montana as a whole, so I'm certainly not going to shoot up any theaters next week when Ressler Motors decides to honor Billy Bob as their salesperson of the month rather than Bob since don't ask me how, I just know Bob is more deserving.
ESPN is just like the Academy in that the white men in charge generally recognize their own - Even if you're still angry that ESPN gave Caitlyn Jenner a blue ribbon and plastic trophy, just wait until next year when they go back to the status quo by pulling the same trick the Academy does whenever they recognize minority achievement by tossing table scraps their way in the form of Best Supporting Actress before whitewashing the list of nominees the five years afterward.
If you're still still angry then I suggest the following mental exercise: list your five favorite movies and your five favorite albums. Now count the Oscars and Grammys among them. One, two? Probably zero. If you want to spend time ranking the most courageous people in sports then I'm pretty sure your list can differ from ESPN's.
Rebuttals to dumbfunkery - Counterarguments to the bumper stickers grandma found so convincing.
Support the troops - One of the earliest responses to ESPN announcing Jenner would win their courage award was to claim there were others who should have won an arbitrary award instead, a way to pretend it's not the trans thing, you know, it's just that there are more deserving candidates! This line of reasoning coalesced pretty quickly around Noah Galloway, who won Dancing with the Stars, mostly because of his status as an army veteran.
Should he have won? Sure, maybe. Seems rather courageous, and the recognition would have been nice. But should he have won just because of the army thing? No, unless you want to start handing out this award to a veteran every year considering an annual audit of Iraq and Afghanistan will turn up acts of bravery that make the things ESPN has previously recognized via its courage award seem less consequential: coaching with early onset dementia, hosting a TV show while undergoing cancer treatment, participating in the Olympics as an Aborigine, being falsely imprisoned, etc. There's a reason Lebron James doesn't win the MVP every year even though he's clearly the best player in the universe.
SUPPORT THE TROOPS! - Independent of who was more deserving of some make believe fairy godcourage of an award, the memes argument quickly shifted to questioning whether Caitlyn Jenner going public with her gender identity even qualified as courage at all, the all too easy comparison being, again, soldiers.
Which, I don't get. It's like saying pizza isn't delicious because hamburgers are.
Now I'm sure if you've actually made this argument then someone has already pointed out that there are different ways to be courageous, but I'll take it one bullet point further by reminding you of the types of conflict you should have learned about in elementary school: man vs. man, man vs. nature, man vs. society, and man vs. himself. Since all of these conflicts vary in nature, what constitutes courage also varies. The teenage boy who's afraid to ask his crush to prom is probably the same soldier carrying his homie in the picture above. The lady who has no problem giving an impromptu speech to 20,000 people is probably the same woman still afraid of small insects. And the Jesus who willingly climbed up on that cross is the same God Incarnate too scared to tell the world the real reason he never married. So ja, courage comes in different forms. And really, while I will never doubt the courage of soldiers in combat, it's not an entirely dick thing to point out their courage is often under duress and therefore instinctual, whereas people like Caitlyn Jenner have to maintain theirs despite all the downtime they have alone with their self-doubt, so maybe, just maybe, there actually is a good reason Caitlyn Jenner was recognized by ESPN for her courage.
Putting on a dress is not courageous - Enduring a public response that minimizes your identity as just a dress is exactly why stepping out in a ballgown is a courageous act. If all the world did was burp and scratch its bum when Bruce announced he was Caitlyn then Noah Galloway or someone else would have won this award and I'd be walking my dog instead of writing this. But that's not what happened, so GFY, D.L. Hughley.
This is just distracting from bigger issues - Definitely. Sorry for interrupting your day. I will finish soon and then you can go back to watching C-SPAN, reading The Economist, prepping for your school board testimony next week, and oh never mind you're just going to watch a Real Housewives marathon tonight, aren't you?
What about the children? - Shut your ass up if you actually thought this. You do realize Caitlyn Jenner's children are Kardashians, right?
In conclusion - The same type of person mocking Caitlyn Jenner is the same person who thinks Serena Williams looks like a man. They are more confused about gender than anyone they've ever belittled by calling confused. Support my petition to revoke their share buttons on Facebook.
