She made a record in earnings this year, so 82 grand is big enough to send a message but not big enough to inflict real harm. Now let's drop it, please. Especially the racially-tinged criticism.
Serena, having finally unseated the most anti-climactic world number one ever in Safina, is sitting at 3-0 in the round robin portion of the tournament and has locked up a spot in the semis. Today, Jankovic defeated Wozniacki, and Kuznetsova beat Demientieva, which means Venus secured a semifinal spot in their portion of the bracket. Azarenka is currently up a break on alternate Radwanska and must win to advance. If she loses, Wozniacki moves on. Most of the matches have unfortunately been straight sets, but the Venus win over Kuznetsova sounds like a classic. However, I would venture to guess that most casual fans don't know that tennis is still going on. They probably presume that the U.S. Open is the end of the season, and it really should be since it's the last marquee event. The sport is often described as "limping" its way off the stage, and that's not good for anyone.
That didn't take long. Don't blow any sanity-watchers points reading fan reaction to the Serena situation. Serious overreaction time is upon us, and The Big Scary Black Woman is at fault. Her behavior was truly shocking, yet it's unlikely that the specter of, say, Jankovic doing the exact same thing would have struck people as universally "threatening." Serena paid the price for her actions. She was defaulted. She paid the maximum fine. She's now apologized twice. Yet the calls are for her to be stripped of her total prize money for the tournament or suspended, usually charmingly augmented with terms like "thug" or "criminal." As with any bigoted taunt, the words have to be in your head first in order to 'spontaneously' emerge. People have clearly been waiting for years for Serena to show the true colors they'd expect from someone with her background. Screwing up while black is still a one-strike affair in this country.