by Charing Ball

Have you ever been in the heat of a situation? Been at work where you have a deadline to meet, where a coworker is getting on your last nerve? Or have you been on the phone with the telephone company, who transfers your query call from country to country,until you just reach the point that you snap and let someone have it?

No needs in lying or attempting to play the sanctified, Mother Teresa role because I know we all have been there.  It’s okay, it happens to the best of us. Sometimes all the meditation, happy thoughts and Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo chanting in the world can’t stop the sudden release of raw emotion.  Matter of fact, I went off on an employee of a hardware store recently, who tried to ignore me when I kept asking for his assistance. I yelled, “look here, got dammit, ya’ll got me in here waiting like I’m a damn waiter.” It didn’t make sense but it was effective. And it ain’t right to verbally abuse people but sometimes in the heat of the moment, you just have to turn into the mad rapper and tell ‘em why you mad, son.

Which is why I wasn’t too mad at Serena Williams, who recently “went off” at an umpire during her most recent U.S Open tournament. After losing the first set to Sam Stosur, Williams, who said that she was in the zone, yelled out, “come on!” before Stosur hit the ball. This act apparently violated a little known “point hindrance” rule in tennis, where you are not suppose to do anything that might distract the other player on their return. The umpire, who made the call, deducted a point from Williams, which gave Stosur the first game.  And that’s when all hell broke loose.  In an act of sheer emotion, Williams let the umpire have it with such statements as: “You’re out of control,” “You’re a hater, and you’re just unattractive inside” and “Really, don’t even look at me.” Williams was fined $2000 for her outburst. Also, she lost the game.

Yawn. Besides being one of the most awkward curse-out moments in history (“You are unattractive on the inside” -seriously what was that?) frankly, William’s outburst wasn’t that bad. Before I saw the video of the incident, which has sent shockwaves around the web, I had expected some truly vulgar language unbecoming of a superstar athlete, only to discover that what she said was safe enough to say in front of my grandmother, without being embarrassed. I heard better put-downs from Ned Flanders on The Simpsons.  Call me when she really “goes off” McEnroe-style.

Of course, this isn’t the first time Williams went semi-H.A.M on an ump at one of her matches.  At the 2009 Open, she was fined $82,500 and put on probation for threatening to shove a ball down the throat of a referee who kept giving her poor calls including a minor foot fault, which some argue should have been called in the first place.  And as such, some folks – mainly Fox News and company – see this, as well as the other incidences, of Williams’ apparent sense of entitlement, even going as far as to suggest that her rant had some racial undertones, particularly the hater part.

And then there are others, particularly from the Afro-sphere, who wonder if her outburst has helped to reinforce stereotypes of the angry black woman. For one, tennis has a long history of whiney crybabies throwing temper tantrums. And yes the media tends to overblow things related to black people, especially regarding anger, because who isn’t scared of an angry Black person right?