More than 1,000 years ago, Indigenous people journeyed into a dark cave on the land now called Missouri and painted nearly 300 detailed images on its walls.

The cave was a sacred space, where tribes performed ceremonies, made sense of the universe and buried their dead. A millennium later, the paintings contained within it continue to offer clues about how those civilizations lived and what they believed.

Donald Trump will likely go down in U.S. history as one of the worst, if not most corrupt, presidents. Sadly, his reactionary legacy will live on much, much longer than his one term in office. His three Supreme Court appointments – Neil Gorsuch (2017), Brett Kavanaugh (2018) and Amy Coney Barrett (2020) – have joined with the Court’s two arch conservatives — Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito – and one moderate — John Roberts – to forge the most conservative Court since the 1930s.

Congratulations to Daniil Medvedev for winning the Men’s US Open tennis championship last night. Novak Djokovic came within one match of repeating Rod Laver’s 1969 feat of winning the four major international tournaments in one calendar year, but his Russian opponent was simply too strong and too consistent. Djokovic had won his previous matches in this US Open without playing his very best tennis. To achieve his dream of equalling Laver’s feat and surpassing Rafa Nadal and Roger Federer in major tournament wins, he needed to significantly raise the level of his game against Medvedev. He was unable to do so, and was eventually reduced to destroying his racket on the hard court surface in one of his signature displays of pique. Medvedev’s control of the match was never really in doubt.

A loud minority of the spectators at the US Open are often disrespectful of the players and of the norms usually observed during professional tennis matches, but what happened during last night’s final was truly shameful. That a significant part of the public loudly booed Medvedev during and between points simply because he was convincingly beating Djokovic was disgraceful. It is a shame that nobody spoke about this problem firmly and directly at the awards ceremony. Medvedev made a veiled reference to the deplorable fan behaviour, but it was incumbent on the organisers to say something, which they did not. The chair umpire should have probably spoken clearly and firmly about it during the match as well. It would appear that if you have the money to buy a ticket to the US Open Final, you are allowed to act like a spoiled brat. Since no official criticism was heard, next year will likely see some fans behaving just as poorly.

VM

Looking back on two decades of media self-censorship, scapegoating and stenography