Thursday, June 4, 2015

Weasel of the Week: Jennifer Bradford

There's always a buzzkiller somewhere.

In the case of Caitlyn (formerly Bruce) Jenner, there is someone named Jennifer Bradford, who launched a petition on change.org on Monday, the same day that the latest issue of Vanity Fair, with Jenner on the cover, hit newsstands. Armed with a sense of history and little else in the way of common sense, Ms. Bradford is petitioning the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to revoke the gold medal awarded to the then-Bruce Jenner in Montreal in 1976 for winning the Decathalon.

The IOC's response? Sorry, it ain't happening.

Ms. Bradford's grandstand play has managed 10,000 signatures in less than a week, and the goal is now at 15,000 signatures. She doesn't get it. The IOC is not going to ask Jenner to return a medal won honestly 39 years ago, just because of a change in gender that came way after the fact. Things don't happen like that very often.

Meanwhile, in Hollywood, rapper Snoop Dogg posted on Instagram referring to Jenner as a science project. While that might've been meant as a joke, there will be people who will respond negatively and dismiss Mr. Dogg as being insensitive at worst. Right about now, you'd think he'd say something to the effect of, "now wait just one minizzle", like he said to Lee Iacocca of Chrysler in a commercial some years back.

So why is Ms. Bradford getting the Weasel ears and not Snoop? Because of a fool's folly that has attracted thousands of suckers, that's why.

And, lest we forget, ESPN, sister network to ABC, which broadcast the now-infamous interview conducted by Diane Sawyer with Jenner a few weeks back, has decided to award Jenner the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at this summer's ESPY Awards ceremony, and that's got some people bent out of shape, feeling the award is meant for someone more deserving than Jenner, whose transition from male to female has taken nearly a year to complete, with the requisite tabloid speculation along the way.

And that will have the cynics saying this is all a publicity stunt, typical of the Jenner/Kardashian clan. Maybe ESPN's afraid a certain jackass with the initials K. W. might show up and crash the party if they did give the Ashe award to someone else. Of course, I could be wrong.

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