Brittney Griner, used by Putin and now also by right-wing US cultural warriors

During an NBA game between the Utah Jazz and Minnesota Timberwolves on December 9th, the jumbotron at Vivint Arena in Salt Lake City lit up with the words, “Welcome home Brittney Griner!” Half the crowd cheered the news that an American WNBA star had been released after serving 10 months in prison for carrying a cannabis-infused vape through a Moscow airport. The other half lustily jeered, apparently appalled that their compatriot had been freed from the custody of Vladimir Putin and his grim regime.

As a metaphor for how divided the country is on this and just about every issue, big and small, the spectator response was near enough perfect.

In the two weeks since the Biden administration negotiated a prisoner swap (giving the Russians back Viktor Bout, a notorious arms dealer, in exchange), Griner has been in the crosshairs of the right-wing outrage industrial complex.

As she spent several days under treatment at Brooke Army Medical Center reintegration facility in Texas, various media bloviators accused her of being a man, a spy, a traitor and some sort of commie double-agent who got arrested as an elaborate Putin-concocted, long-game ruse to eventually bring home Bout. And, inevitably, it quickly became accepted fact across the Trumpian community that she gained her freedom because she’s a black lesbian, a celebrity and a beneficiary of dreaded woke culture.

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“I also want to make one thing very clear: I intend to play basketball for the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury this season,” said Griner in her first public statement, apparently oblivious to the fact she is now and forever much more than just a formidable six-foot nine-inch center who changed women’s basketball forever with her skill-set. “And, in doing so, I look forward to being able to say ‘thank you’ to those of you who advocated, wrote, and posted for me in person soon.”

When handed a basketball upon her return to America, the first thing Griner did was to dunk it, a joyous, visceral response to how much she missed the game she once bestrode. Upon boarding the plane to fly from San Antonio to her home in Arizona, she was surprised to see her Phoenix Mercury team-mate Diana Taurasi, the club president Vince Kozar, and general manager Jim Pitman waiting to accompany her on the flight. Like her, the team is anxious she will be back on the court by the start of the new season in May, even if she returns bearing the scars of captivity and carrying the baggage of her now outsize role in America’s toxic culture wars.

“What kind of a deal is it to swap Brittney Griner, a basketball player who openly hates our Country (sic), for a man known as ‘The Merchant of Death’, who is one of the biggest arms dealers anywhere in the World (sic), and responsible for tens of thousands of deaths and horrific injuries,” asked former president Donald Trump. “Why wasn’t former marine Paul Whelan included in this totally one-sided transaction?”

The evidence she “hates” her country (her father served in Vietnam) is that she once advocated having the WNBA not play the national anthem before games to protest against ongoing racial injustice. And the Whelan whataboutery was classic Trumpian tomfoolery. While many are outraged Whelan remains imprisoned in Russia since 2018 for alleged spying while Griner is free, the problem was Putin refused to make the more prized asset part of any deal. Veteran diplomats have also testified Trump showed absolutely no appetite for negotiating Whelan’s release when he was in the Oval Office and such matters were in his purview. Still, the former president’s cultists promote a narrative likely to dog the athlete for the rest of her career.

“Griner is clueless,” said Eric Bolling, a host on NewsMax, a television station for those who think Fox News has become too bleeding heart liberal (no, seriously). “She can’t free-throw or hide her stash to save her life. We used America’s negotiating power and leverage to get a WNBA player out of a Russia jail because she couldn’t live without her marijuana fix ... This social justice warrior is helping to add riches to the Russian oligarchs.”

Prior to her release, Griner had just been moved to IK-2 or Corrective Colony No 2. Located 300 miles east of Moscow in the Republic of Mordovia, it is regarded as one of the toughest penal camps in the country, a place renowned for breaking prisoners using psychological torture and an unrelenting regime of silence, isolation and dehumanisation. Even by the current nauseating standards of public discourse, the wave of anger across America at getting one of its citizens liberated from that facility has been astonishing.

[ Brittney Griner: brilliant basketball talent to high-profile prisoner ]

Many critics believe her incarceration was her own fault, partly because Trump has said that she was “loaded up with drugs” when arrested at Sheremetyevo Airport. In fact, she had 0.702 grammes of cannabis oil in her possession. But, she shouldn’t have been playing in Russia anyway, they contend. Well, with some veterans drawing down just $70,000 a year, the WNBA does not pay enough so the best players spend the off-season traversing the globe, making five times their American salaries in clubs all over Europe and Asia.

Griner was in Russia because UMMC Ekaterinburg needed her to play centre. Her misfortune was to be there when Putin, a week away from invading Ukraine, needed a pawn.