I’m not a fan of the WNBA. I think it’s a joke of a league. I’m not a huge fan of women’s basketball, period, though I’ve got nothing against women playing basketball. I just notice that women’s basketball has emerged as a particular kind of entity which is hard to like.
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And the people it attracts as participants and huge fans are really, really hard to like.
That said, the Caitlin Clark-Sophie Cunningham show in Indiana is pretty cool. Those two are relatively likable — Clark because she’s an outstanding player and Cunningham because she brings a lot of personality to the court. If you had a league full of players like those two, you probably could sell women’s basketball. (RELATED: The Spectacle Ep. 451: Caitlin Clark and Sophie Cunningham vs. The WNBA: We’re Fatigued)
The WNBA doesn’t cultivate Sophie Cunninghams, though. The opposite is true. It’s actively discouraging people like her from getting involved, in favor of… other people.
And I know it wants nothing to do with me, so, as the meme says…
I’m not alone. The WNBA gets pretty lousy viewership for a major sports league, and it’s dependent on subsidies from the NBA. It’s also dependent on as many controversies as it can stir up in order to spice up its games.
Which is why the league’s referees are basically pro wrestling refs who call games in utterly absurd ways. And it’s why the league’s players say off-the-wall stupid things all the time, nonstop. All the worst instincts of the social media world are present in how the WNBA conducts its business.
And the most absurd thing about the WNBA is the refusal to simply allow reality in the door. This is a basketball league for biological women, and there is no legitimate moral or intellectual case for allowing anyone but biological women to play.
Except the angry feminists/lesbians who govern the WNBA — like angry feminists/lesbians everywhere not named J.K. Rowling, it seems, simply cannot stick to reality when it comes to sex and gender. Somebody brainwashed them into the idea that they have to treat sexually-confused men who want to wear women’s clothing and LARP as female as though those men were women.
This, despite the fact that an overwhelming proportion of society has already rejected such fantasies.
And when the league’s popular players — Cunningham being perhaps the best example — come out for the majority position, you’ve now got coaches, front office people, owners and so forth continuing to push the Alphabet Mafia narrative. (RELATED: Sophie Cunningham Says Biological Men Should Not Play in the WNBA)
We don’t have to put up with this. And now, people are coming forward to declare that the emperor is buck naked.
1. Thank You, Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White
Kanter Freedom and White are a pair of “washed-up” NBA players with nothing better to do than start trouble, and it seems like both of them picked the good kind, noting that the WNBA’s stated rules would allow a man who declares that he’s a woman to play in the league. So both of them declared themselves as entrants into the 2027 WNBA draft.
This created the kind of moment where everything stops for just a little while, and then pandemonium kicks in.
Like when you turn on the light, and there’s a cockroach in the middle of the floor. You can almost hear the little varmint saying “Uh, oh!” before he makes a mad dash for the wall.
Because the WNBA’s top brass is full of woke idiots who fully imbibed all of the LGBTQ indoctrination as part of the Gender Studies universe they’ve been latched onto since college, and in running a league which is being subsidized by the NBA and given a major league billing by TV networks like ESPN without having to actually prove itself, they’ve been mostly insulated from the consequences of decisions based on that indoctrination.
Nobody pays attention, so nobody cares.
Except with the new collective bargaining agreement about to kick in, bottom dollar in the WNBA for a player is going to be well into the six figures — multiple times what players in the G-League, the developmental minor league of the NBA, will make.
And so while Kanter Freedom and White have done what they’ve done mostly to make a point, there is actually a real reason why men might want to expose the absurdity of the WNBA’s rules.
If it’s a league for biological women, then that’s a defensible position, and while a player of G-League level talents might believe it’s grossly unfair that people who aren’t as good as he is as players would be making 10 times what he makes, there’s not much actionable about his belief.
But if it’s a league which buys into the woke “inclusion” language and purports to inflict the effects of that language on its players, then there is no reason why a G-League men’s player can’t declare himself a woman and claim a WNBA salary.
Rules matter. Either write them according to the reality at hand, or watch the absurdity walk through the door.
Neither of these guys will end up playing in the WNBA, if for no other reason than the NBA is going to drop the hammer on the WNBA before they’ll allow this absurdity. But the trans-ideology dance is over as a result of the stunt they pulled this week. It hasn’t happened yet, but the WNBA is going to “clarify” its policy on sex and player eligibility. And that’s outstanding.
Unless, of course, there are already biological men playing in the WNBA. In which case there is no clear end to the fiasco to come.
This controversy isn’t a big deal, in the grand scheme of things. But it could be, if it leads to other things.
2. Kanterizing Politics?
Rush Limbaugh used to make a big show out of, as he called it, illustrating absurdity by being absurd. Limbaugh would have absolutely delighted in what Kanter Freedom and White are doing to the WNBA.
But there really isn’t enough of this going on, and that should change.
In yesterday’s column, I mentioned the segment I did Wednesday morning on Dan Proft’s Chicago Morning Answer show. We were talking about the affordability issue, and I brought up this WNBA draft controversy. I noted that one thing the Republicans in Congress could do to offer a break to the “highly educated but downwardly mobile” crowd who seem to be such a fertile garden for the DSA would be to make student loan debt dischargeable in bankruptcy. (RELATED: Poor Francesca Hong, a Victim of Milwaukee’s Missing Election Results)
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There is nothing about student debt that should make it sacred, particularly when the ease and size of that debt has been abused by universities to lure people into getting degrees which are commercially worthless, and the university departments presenting them essentially amount to a jobs program for campus leftists. (RELATED: Loan Reform Requires Colleges With Skin in the Game)
As I said on Proft’s show, most of the people who would avail themselves of bankruptcy protections to get out from under that mountain of student debt wouldn’t likely suffer all that big a hit to their credit ratings.
It’s not a perfect piece of policy, but as a rhetorical flourish and a nuclear bomb dropped on the Democrats’ affordability narrative, it’s pretty useful. That mountain of student debt for so many of those young Americans who were not at all well-educated in universities run by some of the biggest frauds and nastiest societal wreckers we’ve ever produced is a real problem. It’s tying up resources which could be used on home mortgages, car purchases or nest eggs.
And yes, you should pay your debts. We all agree on that. But we should also agree that if there is a misapplication of wealth out there — there always is in every society; one of the benefits of a free society is its ability to correct that misapplication peacefully and productively — then we can look to policy as a means of making such corrections intelligently.
It was policy which created the higher education bubble. Policy can and should resolve it. And this is a very easy way to do that. (RELATED: Five Quick Things: Rip-off U.)
It’s also an application of the Kanterization rule — find the absurdity, find its focal point, and then mount a full frontal attack on it and watch the defense collapse.
Let some Hard Left university president of Rip Off U, who’s charging kids $85,000 a year in tuition to get degrees in sociology, show up at a congressional hearing sounding like the hardest-ass capitalist bankster you’ve ever seen to scream about a bankruptcy discharge bill. Watch the heads explode. And then see the downwardly-mobile student debtors turn their heads and say “Wait a minute, what’s going on here?”
Maybe some of them start putting things together and realizing they got taken for all of their disposable income until the age of 40 by the people who indoctrinated them and supplied them with their politics, and then they maybe re-examine that political indoctrination.
Anyway, I could throw a number of other examples like this which could be bubble-busters. You folks are welcome to toss your own ideas into the comments.
3. Affordability, Did You Say?
This doesn’t really fit the narrative…
Thank you, President Trump!
Washington Post: “Prescription drug prices record sharpest drop in more than 60 years”https://t.co/EAZJWDGWvP
— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) August 13, 2026
I could probably do an entire column on the hidden good economic news the media doesn’t want folks to know about. I almost did one about that “bad” jobs report for July, which was actually pretty good, seeing as though what made it a “bad” jobs report was a decline in government jobs and some 51,000 illegal aliens being deported, both of which are things we voted for. Manufacturing was up, construction was up. (RELATED: Good News, Bad Reactions: The Logic of Financial Markets)
Already, though, I’m seeing the “yeah, buts” from the news about prescription drug prices dropping. Specifically, that this is something which helps old people and they’ve already got all the money.
Which… fine, but when Grandma’s meds get way cheaper, that means Grandma’s cash stash goes further, and when she departs this earth there will be more for the kids and grandkids to divvy up. I’m not sure why people don’t see that as a plus. Or would you rather just tax the hell out of Grandma’s IRA and stock portfolio so that the government gets it and you don’t? (RELATED: The View’s Joy Behar Is Furious TrumpRX Is Lowering Drug Costs)
How stupid are you? And why are you canceling out my vote?
4. News From Wizard-Hat World
In the last couple of 5QT columns, I’ve run the first two installments of the hilarious AI music videos about Wizard Hat Dude. The feedback on these has been pretty surprising. I thought I’d get a mixed bag of reactions, the bulk of which would be the ubiquitous “AI slop” complaints. But that hasn’t really been it at all. Most of you seem to be getting a kick out of the Wizard Hat saga.
Which means I’m going back to that well. Because there’s a new Wizard Hat installment. Namely, it’s the story of the guy in the green Dodge convertible who stole the wizard hat, and he’s living his best life…
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Dead Sun (@deadsun_0)
Oh, and also, this happened. Somebody suggested on X to Elon Musk that he ought to just buy the U.K. and fix it, and Musk responded, “How much?” — and so we have this…
View this post on InstagramA post shared by AI • News • Internet Culture (@erasvat)
5. The Necessary Men — Off and Running!
I’d be horribly remiss if I didn’t blow the horn at least a little loudly over the fact that the serialization of The Necessary Men, the fourth of the Mike Holman novels, is now upon us. The first of 10 episodes, which will run every Wednesday and Saturday here at The American Spectator and give our subscribers a chance to read the whole book before anybody else can, has already dropped — check it out here.
And the second episode pops on Saturday.
Already getting some quite favorable reviews.
It’s impossible to tell how these things will be received before they’re published, but the one thing I can say about this one is that writing it has been a real educational experience. I’d not done a ton of research into Cuba as it currently is, since for the most part we generally consider the place irrelevant given its poverty and dysfunction. But Cuba is actually a whole lot more important than we think given what that regime is actually doing.
Beyond immiserating its own people, that is.
I get into a lot of that in The Necessary Men, but of course it’s couched in a fictional portrayal. Still, you’ll learn a lot. In fact, the scene in the prologue might seem somewhat fanciful, but it’s based on the reality that Cuba is, in fact, turning into a narco-state. And that can’t be allowed to happen.
I’ve been joking to people that I needed Miguel Diaz-Canel and the rest of the slimeballs running that regime to hang on just long enough for the book to come out. Well, September 26 is the publication date when it’ll be available at Amazon and at MikeHolman.com (and you can pre-order signed copies of the paperback at the site here). So if they can hold out until October before collapsing, that would be OK.
Or not lasting that long would be OK as well, though I would be a little sad at being scooped by reality.
But for the next five weeks these episodes will be banging out here at TAS, and that means you’ve got privileges the rest of the world can’t match. And you don’t even have to feel guilty about that.
Anyway, now that you’ve come to the end of the 5QT, you’ve got time to hit Episode 1. So here it is. Happy reading!
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READ MORE from Scott McKay:
Poor Francesca Hong, a Victim of Milwaukee’s Missing Election Results
The New IRA, Irish Migrants, and the Breakdown of Social Compacts
Five Quick Things: Which One of These DSA Morons Is the Worst One?
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