There is no March Madness for Novak Djokovic.
The un-Covid vaccinated world No. 1 isn’t playing in the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, California, (also known as the Indian Wells Masters) this week, and he won’t be playing in the Miami Open (March 19 through April 2), this despite appeals from notables like Billie Jean King that went all the way to the White House and from tournament directors, who, faced with the retirement of Roger Federer and Serena Williams and injury to Rafael Nadal, need all the superstars they can get.
Time really is another country. At this point, it makes no sense to prevent unvaccinated foreigners from entering the United States since millions of people have had only one shot or two, the effectiveness of which has long since worn off, and even those who’ve had five have in many cases gotten Covid. (Indeed, the House Republicans have called for the rescinding of all Covid emergency policies, including barring the unvaccinated from entering the country, and the policies are going to be rescinded in May anyway, so why not just get rid of them now?) Given rapid testing, the availability of masks and the fact that tennis is a naturally socially distanced sport, Djokovic doesn’t appear to pose a health threat to anyone but himself. (He’s had the virus at least twice.)
But this has, I now realize, never been about public safety or even liability. Rather it, like everything else these days, is about politics with both the right and left fumbling the political football.
Like the liberal Australian government that deported Djokovic before the 2022 Australian Open in a debacle that only exposed its treatment of refugees, the Biden Administration can’t appear to be giving special treatment to celebrities. Everyone is equal under the law. But that’s a bit specious. We’re not going to play Wimbledon. Every job has its perks — and its responsibilities.
And like the previous Australian government, the Biden Administration doesn’t want Djokovic to become the poster boy for the anti-vax movement. But that is what he has unwittingly become. The way Fox and other right-wing broadcasters celebrated his 2023 Australian Open win you would’ve thought Ron DeSantis had just been elected president.
Still, I think the Tucker Carlsons of the world would be surprised with Djokovic’s stance on social justice issues, which ally him more with the left than with the right. When Naomi Osaka was struggling with mental-health concerns, she said Djokovic was one of the first players to call her. He gave more than $1 million to Serbian hospitals in the pandemic. He’s spoken out on behalf of refugees. His foundation is committed to early-childhood education. He’s ready to play or give whenever there’s a natural disaster. He’s a driving force behind the Professional Tennis Players Association (PTPA), a union dedicated to giving male and female players who aren’t as successful as he a bigger share of the pie. Sounds pretty “woke” to me.
It’s like saying that Pope Francis is conservative, because the Roman Catholic Church is anti-abortion. But Pope Francis is more concerned about the plight of migrants, the state of the environment and the need for compassion toward the LGBTQ+ community than the DeSantis crowd. We are all complex creatures, falling on different places on different spectrums. Our failure to understand this is a kind of mental laziness along with a failure of the imagination and our educational system — under assault from those who would have learning confined to one viewpoint and those who would downgrade the arts and humanities, which challenge us to think critically.
But it goes deeper than this. We humans naturally project ourselves onto others. It’s understandable. We bring our experiences to every situation. At some point, however, we have to stop and see people — especially celebrities — for themselves and not as the repositories of our identities, our tribes, our desires. Novak Djokovic isn’t Rand Paul. Nor is he St. Francis of Assisi. He’s a tennis player who for whatever reason — maybe because he grew up in an authoritarian country, maybe because of some New Age view of his body as a kind of temple — doesn’t hold with Covid vaccine mandates.
I can only speculate on his reasoning. Frankly, I don’t care. In his situation, I would’ve gotten the vaccine. But then, I’ve had five shots and numerous other vaccines beside. I believe in their efficacy, in their role in public safety and policy and in their need to be mandatory in certain situations (measles and polio in schools).
But I have never believed that the Covid unvaccinated should be prevented from exercising their livelihoods in an office or on a tennis court. (A hospital is another matter.) Let the unvaccinated play and let them get tested every day at their expense.
As for the rest of us, it’s time to see others as they are — not who we want them to be — and love them anyway.