I pity the fools!

By Javier Palenque

It has been nearly 35 years since we first heard Mr. T say “I pity the fool” as Clubber Lang in Rocky III, and the phrase has stuck with him ever since. Mr. T explained what it means to him.

“When you pity someone, you’re showing them mercy. I didn’t start this pity stuff; it was in the bible. You’ll find pity so many times in the Bible and fool so many times, so I put ’em together. Pity the fool,” Mr. T said. He added, “Lotta guys in the Bible [were] asking for pity. And then a lot of them were saying, I did a foolish act. So, I put ’em together.” Now that is a nice bit of Americana for you, but in common American slang, I pity the fool is a phrase in the urban lingo popularized by Mr. T meaning that he feels sorry for you because he is about to beat your ass… I pity the fool who wants to challenge me to an argument.

In the tennis context, I want to raise awareness for the absolute foolishness of the power 7 (GS, ATP, WTA, ITF) and their numbing collective silence in the Djokovic tragedy. They are all surprisingly quiet about the saga and injustice brought to the world’s best player in the history of the sport. You see if these organizations were about the sport and not their pocketbooks (remember they are non-profits with only for-profit events) they would defend the sport and of course the luminary that is better than everyone else who has…