Twitterness And Bitterness: Serena Williams Versus Farmers Classic

Oh the tweetness of Serena Williams!

In a classic case of a "but-you-started-it" quarrel, the WTA World No. 1 unleashed a particularly vindictive side of her "diva-ish" self as she publicized (read: tweeted) the slight that she had received at the hands of the Farmers Classic tournament organizers.

In a nutshell, the dispute plays out like this.

Serena does promo work with James Blake for the tournament. Serena asks for four tickets from the tournament organizers. Serena is told that she must pay $100 per ticket. Serena not happy. Serena logs on to twitter. Serena posts this .

Farmers Classic loses. Tennis loses. Serena wins.

That's her ace down the line? Accusing the tournament of using her and then instructing her 1.7 million followers not to go see the tournament?

It's crass, puerile, jejune and not particularly extenuated by the fact that Serena willingly or unwillingly is a powerful representative for tennis.

She had me on her side after the first tweet. I was busy wondering aloud how the organizers could have been so callous and disrespectful by not extending a simple and complimentary gesture to her when the second tweet changed everything. 

Juvenile behavior need only be excused or considered less judgmentally when the offender is juvenile, not a global superstar. For Serena to claim that she would have paid $1000 for a ticket if she hadn't done promotional work for the tournament doesn't exactly alleviate the severity of her earlier tantrum of an outburst.

And enough about Serena already. You just have to marvel at the rationale behind the decision to ask Serena Williams to pay for her tickets.

Perhaps the brain behind it thought that the rule of the tournament was hard and fast enough not to warrant a single exception.

And while that's not stubbornly innocuous, it is plain stupid! I don't believe that it would have hurt them to extend a grateful hand by forking out a few hundred dollars worth of tickets for Serena.

They didn't. And that makes them look bad too.

At the end of this he-said-she-said drama, what exactly are we left with? What's my age again? What exactly am I trying to prove? 

This time that's the heads of it.

And the tails of it as well.