Nobody can accuse the basketball star LaMelo Ball of being bad at his job. That said, the Minnesota Timberwolves point guard doesn’t seem to be a huge fan of dribbling.
Ball has a nine-month-old son, LaOne, with his partner Ana Montana (real name: Analicia Chaves) and is apparently uninterested in dealing with all the body fluids that come with a baby.
“You’re a dad now,” the sportscaster Ernie Johnson Jr said to Ball during an ESPN interview on Wednesday. “Are you a diaper changer?”
“Nah, my girl do all that,” Ball replied. “We got a good gameplan going on. So I know what I gotta do, bring to the table, she know what she gotta do, bring to the table.”
Johnson, to his credit, seemed disappointed by this answer. “Oh man, you don’t know what you’re missing, I’m telling you that.”
“I did it before, you feel me? I’ve definitely did it before, [but] it’s just not my job,” Ball clarified. “You know what I’m saying? It’s not my job.”
Well, actually, excuse me while I mumsplain here, but it very much is your job. A baby doesn’t care that you signed a five-year contract extension worth up to $260m in 2023. Parenting is a 24/7 commitment no matter how much money you make.
Ball and Montana (and, presumably, a team of hired help) are obviously free to share domestic duties however suits them. Nobody expects a professional athlete to be as hands-on as a parent with a more flexible schedule.
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But going on TV and boasting about how you don’t change diapers? That’s an extremely outdated look. A 1982 study based on fathers in Britain found 43% of fathers had never changed a nappy (as diapers are called in the UK). By 2000, that figure had dropped to 3%. Meanwhile, the average time US dads spend caring for their offspring daily has quadrupled over the past 50 years and about 85% of dads say parenthood is one of the most important aspects of their identity. Being a hands-off dad is now very last century.
Still, even though modern fathers are doing a lot more, they’re still held to different standards than mothers. Imagine if a female athlete said changing diapers wasn’t her job: the rightwing pitchforks would be instantly out for her.
It doesn’t matter how accomplished a woman is in her career; there’s still an expectation that her identity as a mother comes first. Particularly under the Trump administration, which is trying to foster a whole new generation of tradwives.
Ball is only 25, so I’ll give him some grace. But I hope the backlash to his comments makes him realize that only complete losers boast about not changing diapers. A case in point: Donald Trump.
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“I would never ask to change [Barron],” the president told the New York Post in 2006. “Melania probably wouldn’t let me. I’d just do it wrong.” Asked whether he’d ever changed the diapers of his four other children, he said he probably had, but couldn’t remember.
There’s a phrase frequently applied to men who pretend they’re incapable of doing basic domestic chores in order to wriggle out of them: weaponized (or strategic) incompetence. In Trump’s case, however, it may not actually be weaponized incompetence. It may just be incompetence.
Which leads me to present a modest proposal. In the future, we should apply the Diaper Test™ to any man in the running for a high-powered job. If he can’t clean up his own child’s mess, he’s sure to make a mess of the job.
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Gamblers were betting on the outcome of the Cornell 7 sexual assault case
Two days after a New York district attorney reopened the alleged Cornell University gang-rape case, the Polymarket gambling app allowed people to bet on the results of the investigation. According to Defector, Polymarket initially said nothing about why they were letting people bet on a traumatic sexual assault case, before issuing a PR statement full of corporate gobbledegook. “Markets bring objective, data-driven insight into how a matter like this is moving through the legal system, on a topic that deserves far more transparency and honest attention,” the statement read. Monetizing sexual assault is feminism now, apparently! Polymarket then reconsidered this position. After about three weeks of being up, the bet has been removed from the platform.
Trump has a weirdly homoerotic midterm strategy
Adam Gabbatt examines why the president keeps “offering unsolicited, and increasingly unhinged, assessments of men’s bodies”.
Poland’s parliament votes to slightly ease abortion laws
In 2021, a near-total ban on abortion took effect in Poland. Now the lower house of parliament has approved two bills that would remove some criminal penalties for people who help women access abortion care and would allow a termination if there was a foetal abnormality. While that sounds like a small step in the right direction, the draft laws are likely to be vetoed by the conservative president, Karol Nawrocki. Women are now protesting on the streets in more than 20 Polish cities demanding access to legal abortions.
Liechtenstein prince uses veto to quash abortion access
It’s not just Poland that seems determined to be at odds with the rest of Europe on abortion. The hereditary prince of Liechtenstein, who will never need an abortion himself, has used his veto for the first time to kill off a bill that would have eased the country’s draconian laws.
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The death toll since the October ‘ceasefire’ in Gaza rises to 1,538
Israeli attacks killed yet another child in Gaza this week as the territory faces a new risk of famine.
Trump and JD Vance are defending an ad weaponizing sexual abuse
Democrat Amy Acton is running against Republican Vivek Ramaswamy to be governor of Ohio. It’s a tight race and Ramaswamy clearly thinks he can’t win on merit because he’s stooped to putting out a revolting attack ad featuring Acton’s estranged mother, Donna Arthur, whose former husband has been accused of sexually abusing Acton when she was a child. In the ad, Arthur accuses Acton of lying “her entire life”. There’s been bipartisan backlash to the ad, but JD Vance has mounted a vigorous defense, saying he’s “disgusted” by fellow Republicans who have criticized it. On Thursday, Trump also endorsed the ad, calling it “very powerful”.
The week in pawtriarchy
Remember when the Nordic phenomenon of slow TV was being touted as the antidote to the frenetic nature of modern life? Well it’s back! A 24-hour Finnish TV show that follows the progress of a dog and her six newborn puppies has become a massive hit. The show has an accompanying 24-hour webcam, Pentulive (Puppy Live), which is very soothing. I recommend tuning in whenever you feel like the world’s gone barking mad.
