DramatistDreamer

He is who we all thought he was.

I read her memoir several years ago and remember her talking about her weight gain in the wake of her father's illness and death and how the weight caused her foot injuries. When Seles was number one and the stabbing happened, I wasn't able to see the match because I was in school at the time and could only see the news footage. It was shocking, like looking at some other sport, some place that I could not recognize. It was only years later, watching that ESPN SportsCentury documentary, that I would learn how the WTA had voted against freezing Seles' ranking in place while she was off the Tour recuperating. It was cold-blooded but the WTA shouldn't have put it to a vote, they should have just done the right thing and automatically froze her ranking like they do nowadays-- they don't give players any say on the matter, they just do it. People are under the impression that WTA is a union, it is not- it has a Player's Council but when there are decisions to be made on tournaments, especially the majors, they usually don't consult the players at all. As for Steffi, she should have reacted sooner, but with an abusive father and zealous fanatics that she clearly wanted no part of, Steffi had her share of personal problems too.

Hopefully the surgery and recovery will all be successful for Allyson.

At first, I thought this was yesterday's news being recycled but apparently this happened again today.

Critiques aside, mission accomplished?

One consistent critique of the documentary is that it was it didn't delve deeply enough (another complaint this is somewhat tangential is that the doc was too short) but Janet Jackson has always been somewhat of a mysterious woman, perhaps the result of being from a famous family that has been in the spotlight since she was a very young child. She was never going to give viewers everything. How exactly do people think she was able to keep a nearly decade old marriage a secret in front of the eyes of the world? The New York Times Arts section does call Janet "an astonishingly modern pop superstar" which actually sounds accurate. And this is where the line is and should be drawn between Women of Color and Black Women. I realize that not everyone's struggles are the same but Black women in the United States have a profoundly different experience worldwide and in the United States. Black women were the only women brought to the Americas in chains and bred for commerce. The vestiges of that history are still reverberating to this day and neither money nor education nor class has allowed escape this reality. My mother, my aunts have experienced this, I have experienced this, which is why I recognize things for how they truly are.

Not wanting to get into comparisons, but there is a brutal history of both hypersexualization of Black girls and women, while simultaneously punishing Black women who do have the temerity to take ownership of their own sexuality in a way that does not happen with other women. It just doesn't. So, you can have something as a blink and you miss it moment of a breast that hardly anyone even saw until the media decided to replay the instance over and over incur the wrath of a head of a network for at least a full decade. Also, those who watched the documentary know that the Superbowl was not the only incident of a corporation taking putative measures for something associated with the actions of someone else. Up thread, I mentioned what happened with Coca-Cola. But I do think the more mainstream success one has the more one is able to get away with. In that case, Janet did not have that prolonged amount of mainstream success. I don't know what Black women has that. Beyonce? Eventually "they" came for her too by the time of Formation. Things have changed since then and fortunately, Beyonce could not have cared less. And feminism within the U.S. has historically left out, diminished or flat out ignored the struggles of Black women.

This is still happening. An ongoing occurrence.

So you're saying you basically believe that Janet orchestrated the breast flash the way Madonna planned her book launch? I just want to be clear on what you're saying.

Why has this descended into a Madonna vs. Janet in a thread that was discussing the documentary? And this feels like this has happened before?

I don't think there is so much an Easy/West divide as much as it's Novak vs. others. There were far higher numbers of more visible, prominent players from the Balkans 15-20 years ago than now. You had Seles, Ivanisevic, Ljubicic, Majoli, Dokic, Prpic, etc. Three of those names won at least one major title. Then add on Ivanovic and Jankovic. Nobody had it harder than Seles who was stabbed on court and as an ethnic Hungarian was part of a minority group even with the former Yugoslavia. When you go into Russia alone 15-20 years ago you had a ton more prominent players who dwarf today's numbers. Kafelnikov, Safin, Kuznetsova, Myskina, Demientieva, Safina, Tursunov, not to mention Kournikova. I have been following tennis for a very long time now and there isn't geographic divide in the sport. There are pockets of ethno-nationalism, among European fans from those areas and among MAGA-philic fans.

There is more to theater than musicals. Janet actually has dramatic ability since the days of Penny on Good Times. I agree that it would be beneath her to try to compete with the kids as she would call them. There are other musical directions in which she can go. She seems content right now so I don't think she has to run out there to make bank, I doubt she's in a cash crunch or anything.

Minor characters on soaps continue to provide the biggest source of intrigue in this category for me. On B&B in particular, all of the Black characters who come on in the first few years are pretty much minor characters. I saw an actor who played a forensic pathologist and didn't really recognize him but he was good looking, lol, and I checked for his name in the closing credits. Jesse Moore seems to be quite a Renaissance man.

In the short-term, maybe a few social media posts and momentarily, some talk. Probably an attempt at a promo or two that people will puzzle over. Over the long-term, it will only serve to further erode the possibilities for the viability of this character and further diminish the show's prospects and its legacy as entertainment. You know, the usual.

I sincerely hope no Democrats get enmeshed in all this Republican infighting. It's little more than a distraction to Democrats' goals.

Over the past two decades, SORASing has been employed really recklessly and has done more harm than good to the legacy of these soaps. Noah has not had a halfway decent storyline since the character reached adulthood. And somehow fans have pinned it on actor after actor. When does this become about poor writing and nonexistent direction for this character?

That promo doesn't make sense. Why can no one ever write a decent story for Noah? It's not that hard. It can't be every actor who is impossible to write a decent story. What does Noah do? What are his interests? Find an interior life that doesn't involve a romantic partner and work your way outward from there. C'mon Josh, do better!

Please don't make me watch that lol.

One thing is that I do wish that Janet had changed her management to someone who would have been more culturally sensitive. Even in the midst of that blackballing period, she did cultivate some fans, particularly in the hip hop crowd. Someone posted somewhere on social media, how Black media had provided more coverage and opportunity for her after the "mainstream" audience had abandoned her. This often happens to a lot of Black artists, especially as they get older. You have Dionne Warwick, who mainstream audiences have decided exists again, after it became cool to look at her tweets, but guess who had already declared her "Auntie" status and was already engaging her? Black Twitter. Jackson faded for mainstream audiences but for Black audiences, she never really went anywhere--she just took breaks.

There may be some serious trauma there. No doubt though that Dickson clearly needs help. What she posted of her book online seemed a meandering jumbled rant. At the very least, she needed an editor for her book.

People always talk about Stephanie Forrester preferring Ridge over Thorne, but she sure went to great lengths to protect him when he shot up his older brother's @ss. No doubt Ridge was still her favorite.

Nicholas Paul Walker, who played Trey Clegg on Capitol, are there any recent interviews or articles on him? I read that he is a landscape designer and he and Kathy Ireland co-founded one of her companies?

You're welcome. If only P&G had allowed the SoapClassics people to continue the digitization process. You can always tell the uploads from their DVD sets because the quality is pristine, digital clarity. That clipping is very cool @Soapsuds That is the type of visual aide that I would expect any interviewer to have when interviewing Bryce. You know what's interesting? After posting that 1983 episode, I looked at a few other clips from '83 and was really scrutinizing Meg Ryan's movements and you know who she kind of reminded me of? Jennifer Ashe as Meg Snyder. Not completely but, at times, with the gesticulation and exuberance, when Meg Snyder was not being devious. Now that I think about it, I read that apparently, Ryan and Ashe were friends back in the 80s. I wonder if they still are?

That episode has been up on YouTube for several years. SoapClassics sold it as part of their box sets and streamed the episodes on their website, I remember viewing it there.