Padecky: Was the deal for Brittney Griner worth it?

Brittney Griner and Vladimir Putin are both smiling, relieved, immensely satisfied they both received what they wanted, Brittney for her freedom, Vlady for getting the better of the deal. This is no laughing matter for Brittney, while Putin’s cheeks are hurting for laughing so hard.

Such disparity is unsettling. Long after the WNBA’s best player agrees to the book deals and accepts James Cameron’s offer to make her movie, the image of a smiling Putin hugging “The Merchant Of Death” will be remembered just as poignantly, if only for the severe case of acid reflux it produces.

“The best of a bad deal” is a phrase used in sports quite often and very rarely sees air in any other industry. As much as we hate to mix politics and sports, the time has been thrust upon us, since February when the WNBA star was imprisoned for being caught at a Russian airport with trace amounts of cannabis oil in vape cartridges.

Griner might as well have been caught for burping loudly at a Moscow restaurant. She’s an American celebrity, so the Russians didn’t treat Griner as a criminal as much as a pawn on a political chessboard. As one media report claimed, Russia “creates banks of hostages.”

America pursued her release but let’s be honest here — if Tom Brady was nabbed, it wouldn’t have taken 10 months. To get Brady, there would have been boatloads of money including boats, political favors, shameless public mea culpas, and maybe we’ll cancel the upcoming NFL season. We’ll do everything for pro football.

Some have even suggested America would go to war with Russia to get Tom back. That’s probably an exaggeration.

What’s not an exaggeration is this: Brittney Griner does not carry the same emotional weight as Tom Brady. Brittney is a Black married lesbian activist who speaks loudly and clearly about social justice in this country. Brittney protested — it is, after all, one of the benefits of living in a free country, one shared by many. Griner publicly stated after the George Floyd murder: “I honestly feel we should not play the National Anthem during our season.”

Some have branded her anti-American for saying that, a traitor, someone not be be trusted. Apparently, they weren’t in class that day when the First Amendment was discussed. To protest is to be an American.

Is there another protest coming our way: Will Griner in a press conference suggest America dragged its heels in securing her release from a Russian penal colony? Will she offer reasons why? Will it be because she’s a woman?

While cheering that Griner is home and aren’t-we-all-happy, will we forget whom she was traded for? Viktor Anatolyevich Bout was an arms dealer of legendary proportions. He has a fleet of 60 planes. He could have started his own airline and in a way he did. Bout delivered weapons for anyone who paid for them. In many ways Bout armed the world.

Documents revealed Bout supplied armaments to the following countries: Liberia, Afghanistan, Colombia, Angola, Yemen, Somalia, Yugoslavia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Algeria. He sold weapons to Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the Rwandan Rebels.

Bout served 10 years of a 25-year prison sentence. To the families and friends who died because of his bombs and guns, his release will not find approval, relief or joy. For those families who learn Griner is back home and safe, that America is rejoicing, they will not.

For those who have suffered the devastating consequences from Bout’s planes, they will shrug. Yes, true, Griner had nine years left on her sentence. She would have suffered. She might have died. She already had cut her hair because washing long hair in the Russian winter probably would have resulted in her demise.

But those families had no bargaining chips, no celebrities to haggle for a release. Not fair, that’s the common refrain. Not fair Brittney Griner went to Russia to play basketball and spent 10 months in prison and didn’t get the same treatment as Audrey Lorber.

Lorber, a New York-based film student, was charged with drug possession in St. Petersburg, Russia when authorities found 19 grams of marijuana on her person. Like Griner, Lorber said the drug was for medical reasons. She showed the prescription but the police said it wasn’t valid in Russia, CBS reported in September 2019.

Lorber spent a little more than a month in detention. A court in St. Petersburg fined her 15,000 rubles ($230) after finding her guilty.

“We cannot ignore,” said Senator Bob Menendez, D-New Jersey, of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “that releasing Bout back into the world is a deeply disturbing decision. We must stop inviting dictatorial and rogue regimes to use Americans overseas as bargaining chips. We must try to do better at encouraging American citizens against traveling to places like Russia where they are primary targets for this type of unlawful detention.”

In the meantime, don’t let the imperfect be the enemy of the good. Most of us never met anyone from the 11 countries named above. We don’t know their stories, but if we did, we might have more of a sense of the ugliness of Viktor Bout and sensitivity to the damage he caused.

Until his name surfaced for the first time, Viktor Bout could have been a soccer player in the World Cup. Bout was anonymous to America, but Brittney Griner was not. And therein lies the difference in our response.

To comment write to bobpadecky@gmail.com.