Media’s WNBA Madness: Days After Article Linking Caitlin Clark With Lynching, USA Today Makes Another Huge Clark-Related Reporting Blunder

Let’s face facts here: Caitlin Clark is unpopular with a lot of people because Caitlin Clark is white.

Let’s also face another fact: The people she’s unpopular with think it’s the other way around. They believe that America is a hive of secret Klansmen who didn’t watch women’s basketball because they all hated black people, but once they could find a white person who was an interesting player, they suddenly tuned in.

We could speculate to the reason behind the projection, but the real reason behind her popularity is that the 2025 NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament was basically when people started paying genuine attention to the sport outside of those who adopted fandom as a lifestyle accoutrement, kind of like a cheaper version of a Subaru with a “Coexist” bumper sticker. The political types got mad, yadda yadda yadda again, and now we have USA Today columnists accusing Caitlin Clark of being lynching-adjacent.

If that weren’t enough for one week in USA Today’s history, the paper reported that the Indiana Fever star had skipped a WNBA All-Star Game fan event in order “to get her hair done in her hometown of Des Moines.”

It later turned that she was at an event for her charity foundation. Whoops.

To be fair, it’s not akin to what columnist Nancy Armour did earlier this week when she accused Clark of putting black women at risk by getting fouled, arguing that this was somehow akin to the lynching of black teen Emmett Till in 1955 Mississippi. No, seriously!

It seems there is a white nationalist element to Clark’s fandom that is deeply, deeply problematic, made even more so because the WNBA is made up predominantly of Black women, many of them queer. When Clark claims fouls that don’t exist, when she goes on profanity-laced tirades at referees, those racists see her as a white woman in need of saving and take matters into their own hands. …

It shouldn’t need reminding this country has an awful history of Black people being harmed, even killed, in the name of “defending” white women. The WNBA’s All-Star Game this weekend is in Chicago, Emmett Till’s hometown, and a local art gallery is currently hosting an exhibit imagining his life if he hadn’t been lynched. While it’s incumbent on the WNBA to do more to protect its players, there also should be an expectation on Clark to recognize the wider consequences of her actions.

That was published, and in one of America’s papers of record, no less. Impressive stuff. Armour would later put her socials on lockdown and insist that she “did not provide enough context” for you to get her point, which is the ultimate coward’s apology: Sorry you didn’t get the very intelligent point that I was making, let me explain it a bit further for you.

Statement from USA Today sports columnist Nancy Armour pic.twitter.com/wif3P9Yg82

— Joe Schad (@schadjoe) July 23, 2026

Anyhow, there were no “wider consequences” for Armour — nor, assumedly, for whatever social media copywriters aside from Heather Burns, who has the byline on this piece:

Clarification: Caitlin Clark was attending an event for the Caitlin Clark Foundation, which is why she missed the WNBA All-Star Weekend Orange Carpet.

— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) July 24, 2026

That’s quite the clarification there, USA Today.

From the article:

Caitlin Clark was in Des Moines, Iowa, her hometown, on Thursday night instead of at WNBA All-Star weekend. She had good reason, attending an event for the Caitlin Clark Foundation.

Clark’s hairdresser posted photos of her getting her hair done in waves for the event. Clark left a comment, saying: “So fireeeeeeeee – you the best!”

The article included an editor’s note at the top: “This story has been updated to include additional information.” It doesn’t say what additional information, and an archived version of the original couldn’t be found by searching it up on this end — but judging by the post, the information was that she hadn’t been at the “Orange Carpet,” an event “where players are expected to showcase high fashion looks that are normally reserved for pregame tunnel walks,” the outlet reported.

Yeah, she looked terrible for skipping it until she looked better by not attending a useless event and instead focusing on charity work. Whoops.

Suffice it to say, this didn’t go over well on social media:

What is wrong with the @USATODAY They are so blinded by their hatred of Caitlin Clark they cant even see straight. Pathetic excuses for humans and “journalists” Just stop talking about her already #boycottusatoday pic.twitter.com/uWrXCfS2Gm

— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) July 24, 2026

Just shut down @usatoday. pic.twitter.com/D3Y8m52nxh

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) July 24, 2026

Which, yeah. After the embarrassment that was the Armour/Till piece, I was inclined to take Mark Twain’s advice regarding the embarrassment that was being visited upon the publication: “Let us draw the curtain of charity over the rest of this scene.”

It’s bad enough when one of your writers advises a white woman to take her fouls like a white woman should, lest a lynching from 1955 repeat itself. It’s worse when she gives the “but you just needed a little more context!” excuse, and still worse when, being all in for wokeness as USA Today is, they can’t really fire her, lest they join the supposed “white nationalist element to Clark’s fandom.” Mock the idiots for a few moments and let’s move on with our lives.

But then they run that without so much as a fact-check. She just took a detour to Iowa… to get her hair done? Was there no representative of Caitlin’s they could reach out to, no editor who might have put the brakes on something clearly designed to make Clark look like a privileged diva when she was doing freaking charity work? That’s sloppiness to the point of deliberate malfeasance: Ehh, whatever. She has it coming.

In short, then: Won’t USA Today please pull the curtain of charity over themselves on the way out? Thanks in advance.

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