One of my villains has fallen.
No, she didn’t die.
Worse.
She became human to me and I just can’t hate her as much as I did and I’m kinda pissed about that. Because what’s college basketball without a good hate-watch team?
The Good, The Bad, and the Overly Tanned
Sure, it’s fabulous to root for the UConn women — where all the players are talented, smart, beautiful, volunteer with rescue llamas, and know when to use the salad fork. I’ve been riding and dying with them since 1995 so I’m not going to stop now.
But sometimes you just want to eat nachos and yell bad words on a Saturday afternoon at an overly dressed, vociferous Southern coach with a predilection for neon pantsuits, homophobia, and a motion offense.
And that person, dear reader, is Coach Kim Mulkey of Louisana State University.
Kim has served this hate-watch role well for the past two decades, with numerous victories, several controversial remarks, four national championships, and a string of questionable fashion choices.
Kim is singular and supreme in the Wicked Witch Watch.
But Now the Queen Has Fallen
Mulkey and her LSU team didn’t just lose in the Elite Eight this year. She lost the hate-watch crown because she became … human.
Ugh. I hate when a villain becomes human.
But that’s what happened this year when the Washington Post ran an article they researched for TWO years and which Mulkey objected to publicly before it was even published. (She’s SUCH a good villain, right? “I hate the Washington Post and I’m going to sue them and I don’t even know what they wrote yet!” Stab. Eye poke. Hair pull. Groin kick. Jeez, Kim, calm the F down.)
In the women’s basketball world, we all watched and waited breathlessly for what had to be a juicy, sure-to-contain-dirt, mega-revealing article about the horrible things said and done by Krazy Kim.
Did she kill someone?
Maybe used slurs?
Ran over a grandma?
Bumped a baby carriage with her Mercedes?
What Was Behind the Curtain
Sadly, Kim wasn’t Cruella De Basketball. (Well, sad for us hate-watchers but great for everyone else, including grandmas and babies in carriages.)
The article arrived and we found out that Kim was apparently a sad, older, bitter woman who hadn’t talked to her dad or her sister in about 30 years — and who didn’t seem to care much about her players after they graduated. And, while hard-driving and likely MAGA and very repressed in her concepts of sexuality (which she then forced on her young players — a sin because they struggled then and now with their self-worth due to her words and actions), the evil Kim Mulkey was a product of her upbringing and had never evolved emotionally.
(Read the article here for free: The Kim Mulkey Way.)
Huh.
Imagine getting older but not wiser.
Imagine hurting so much inside that you hurt others and yourself for 45 years, never learning to step into that warm soothing bath of forgiveness for others … and yourself.
Imagine being super-successful, feared, and miserable.
That, dear reader, seems to be the Kim Mulkey way.
Beyond the Outfits and the Outrage
So now I can’t hate her. That’s why I’m pissed.
And it gets worse. Because Kim went and did something good in the same week that we were all looking forward to booing her on the screen.
She stood up for her players and, really, women everywhere when she blasted the L.A. Times for writing old, tired, sexist garbage in their description of an LSU women’s matchup against UCLA. And she was right so the L.A. Times changed the language in the article. (They called the LSU players “dirty debutantes” … whaaaat?)
What’s more? As this saga dragged on, I realized that the media (and our society) was once again feeding anger and directing vitriol toward women — and encouraging it between women. And perhaps I was buying into that with my Kim Krush.
Ugh. The itchiness of emotional learning. Feels like … growing up.
And Beyond Kim
Long ago, I read a Margaret Wheatley piece about how conversations could change the world — and it held this quote “You can’t hate someone if you know their story.”
And that’s true. Or at least, if you have a warm heart, it’s going to be a lot harder because background builds a bridge to understanding. You don’t have to condone, but you might find your way to compassion.
So I always encourage people to tell their stories, not just to be heard but to do what is one of our hardest but most crucial tasks as humans: create connection and community. And this is really how we do it, right? One on one, like in basketball. Just you and me. And then you and another person. Me and another person. It goes on and on.
Because despite our previous ideas that something like social media could enable connection at scale, we now know that concept to be fallacious. Social media enables anger and hate at scale, but it’s far more inept at love. (And aren’t we all?)
So maybe it’s not always true about people and stories — but knowing someone’s story makes it damn harder to hate them.
Because underneath our grown-up clothes and our serious shoes and our use of overblown business jargon, we often find that we are all wounded kids running around in grown-up bodies acting like we know what the fuck we’re doing (when mostly we are all just winging it). Just a bunch of scared Band-Aid covered kids hiding in the bushes and waiting to be called home on an Olly olly oxen free.
Even now.
The Last Back Door Cut
So I can’t hate Kim Mulkey anymore. And — honestly — I’m kind of glad. Because every time you stop hating someone, you free up a little part of your heart to love more. And ugh I hate that I just wrote that.
So thanks Kim, you asshole. You have good in you. Here’s hoping you learn how not to hurt people because you really are a talented coach and I bet you could be an awesome human one day. I’m rooting for you.
Good luck. And may you lose horribly to the UConn women next year. (There, I feel better.)
How about you? Have you lost any villains lately? Or gained any villains? Who’s your hate-watch team or person?
Bonus Reads:
This is so smart! And fun! I love how the spit shine of age cleans that murky glass for us to see humanity☮️Wouldn’t trade it at all.
Loved this so freakin much!! Thank you!