Tennis great Martina Navratilova revealed a serious lack of class Saturday with a tweet celebrating the death of a radio host who was a coronavirus vaccine skeptic but later died of the virus.
On Saturday, the winner of 18 Grand Slams jumped to her Twitter account to gleefully say “womp womp” about the death of Nashville radio host Phil Valentine who was an early skeptic of the coronavirus vaccine. He later contracted the virus, publicly reversed his stance on the vaccine, and said he wished he had taken the medication. Sadly, Mr. Valentine ultimately died from the virus.
Though, Navratilova was decidedly unmoved by Valentine’s passing. On Saturday, in a re-tweet of the story of Valentine’s death, the 64-year-old tennis star wrote, “WOMP WOMP … no mercy from me for this guy.”
Navratilova was initially unrepentant about her pleasure at the man’s death. However, after being inundated with tweets blasting her for her callousness, she finally deleted the tweet (despite saying she would not delete the tweet).
The former tennis star ended up in a back and forth with Twitter user Siraj Hashmi who took a screenshot of Navratilova’s deleted tweet:
deleted, but the List comes for all, @Martina.
✍🏼✍🏼✍🏼 pic.twitter.com/SX4Blct8zQ
— Siraj Hashmi (@SirajAHashmi) August 22, 2021
Hashmi took Navratilova to task for her ignorant tweets, but, naturally, she blocked him:
— Siraj Hashmi (@SirajAHashmi) August 22, 2021
Regardless, Navratilova stuck to her position and battled with other Twitter users for most of the day on Saturday:
WOMP WOMP as in too bad- this guy laughed about people dying and I am supposed to be sad? Nope
— Martina Navratilova (@Martina) August 22, 2021
This man directly and indirectly killed people. Not ok.
— Martina Navratilova (@Martina) August 22, 2021
Homosexuals or drug addicts don’t kill anyone else with their behavior or platform. This guy parodied a disease which killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. With power comes responsibility- this man had none.
— Martina Navratilova (@Martina) August 22, 2021
Navratilova initially refused to delete the offensive tweet celebrating the death of the radio host:
Not deleting anything , bye now…
— Martina Navratilova (@Martina) August 22, 2021
Also, she reiterated her position several times:
As utterly horrible as the guy who made a parody about a disease that killed over 600.000 Americans so far? As horrible as that?
Bye troll— Martina Navratilova (@Martina) August 22, 2021
I am classy. No sympathy for a man like this
— Martina Navratilova (@Martina) August 22, 2021
Saner than you I am sure . Bye now:)
— Martina Navratilova (@Martina) August 22, 2021
Navratilova finally got the hint and deleted the tweet. But she was still unrepentant over her stance:
In case I sounded too harsh or cruel let me rephrase my earlier tweet-
I am not celebrating this man’s passing. But neither am I mourning his passing. He made parody of a disease that has devastated our world and our country- enough said… https://t.co/rRalG56ISn— Martina Navratilova (@Martina) August 22, 2021
Incidentally, you may have noticed that Navratilova constantly said “bye now” to Twitter critics. Every time she did that, she then blocked the user to prevent seeing any further criticism. She even claimed that she was the victim of some coordinated attack on her instead of the object of natural outrage over her satisfaction that someone died.
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