Ms. Navratilova Speaks Out

As many of you already know, Martina Navratilova and I have been friends since 1980. When I met her, she was technically still in the closet. When she was “outed” by her lover, Rita Mae Brown, Martina, who was living in Dallas at the time, hid out at my parent’s house in North Dallas. Besides winning tennis championships, Martina has dealt with tremendous personal controversies on and off the court and has emerged, at 51, as a gentle well-rounded soul. Yesterday when I was flying back from Holland, I flipped open a British newspaper that proclaimed Martina, who defected from Czechoslovakia in 1975, was “ashamed” of the United States and was taking back her Czech citizenship. The British media dug up one of Martina’s anti-Bush comments from last year and paired it with the news that, on January 9^th, Martina was recognized by the Czech government which restored her citizenship. What should have been a real feel-good story—one that Martina never even made light of—has been painted into a political picture. I reached Martina in Tokyo this morning. She says this exclusively, via e-mail, to the FrontBurner Nation: “Of course they are saying that I got the Czech citizenship because of Bush. What a load of crock. As if I was not controversial enough, they need to create controversy where there is none.”