The U.S. women’s Olympic basketball team won the gold medal in the Tokyo Olympics this past Saturday, defeating Japan 90-75. The team has now won the gold in seven straight Olympics. Impressive, to say the least.

Unsurprisingly, Nike wants in on the action, staking its claim with this ad.

Raising the bar at the highest level is what they do. They’ve done it consistently for over 25 years.

Congratulations to the USAB WNT for bringing home their 7th straight 🥇 and continuing to rep the best of us. pic.twitter.com/wfbIu0b5Nb

— Nike (@Nike) August 8, 2021

The commercial is narrated by an on-camera young black woman guilty of cultural appropriation by dying her hair in obvious imitation of Merida from Brave. Her dialogue, taking place in an institution of higher learning that is neither higher nor learned based on the information she is rambling, goes as follows.

Today I have a presentation on dynasties.

Ooooh! A very slightly glorified book report! That’s worth shelling out $125K a year!

But I refuse to talk about the ancient history and drama.

Like all that icky stuff leading to you being in college making a very slightly glorified book report.

That’s just the patriarchy.

The patriarchy. You know, the patriarchy? All the people and institutions throughout history who’ve personally oppressed you and prevented you from getting an education and … oh, wait …

Instead, I’m going to talk about a dynasty that I actually look up to.

Like anyone should actually care.

An all women dynasty.

Like Laurel Hubbard?

Women of color.

Like Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi?

Gay women.

Because we should care about your or anyone else’s sexual preferences exactly why?

Women who fight for social justice.

You mean like Sojourner Truth and Harriett Tubman? Pfft! What did they ever do? MY women took a knee during the National Anthem! Now that’s BRAVERY!

Women with a jump shot.

The only people in the world with one.

A dynasty that makes your favorite men’s basketball, football, and baseball teams look like amateurs.

Because nothing says dynasty more than a team that plays less than a dozen games once every four years.

A dynasty with fire braids.
A dynasty with sick style.

We’ll take your word for it.

A dynasty with crazy dimes.

You never have seen Steph Curry draining threes from behind the mid-court line like most professional basketball players make layups, have you?

A dynasty that makes Alexander the Great,

Okay, we’re waiting for the killer punch line.

look like Alexander the OK.

Okay, we’re still waiting.

The dynasty that’s been reigning for the past twenty-five years.

Once every four years. Or, this year, five.

Undefeated since ‘96.

Congratulations.

The USA Basketball Women’s National Team.

And here we were thinking this was going to be our curling team.

7 times consecutive gold medalists.

Again, congratulations.

And most importantly,

Oh, do tell!

women that made it possible for girls like me

Well, not really you — you’re too short.

to feel like they can be a part of whatever dynasty they want.

Right after you figure out what a degree in women’s studies and half a million in student debt will get you in life.

The greatest. Dynasty. Ever.

Whatever you say, young lady.

While it’s easy to lampoon ads such as this, there is a more serious undertone to consider. Namely, the utter tone-deafness and complete lack of awareness companies such as Nike demonstrate by running such ads as far as who actually buys their product.

While the too cool for school Romper Room rejects in Nike’s marketing departments doubtless think they are being edgy with such tripe, reality tells a different tale. Spend some time at a retail establishment that sells Nike products and observe who buys them. It is a quite diverse customer base in all measurable aspects. So let’s ignore them and go for the sycophant Madison Avenue media tongue bath? Great marketing plan, kids.

Nike and other woker-than-woke consumer goods manufacturers are painfully unaware of their own customer base. They consistently fail to heed the words of Nike’s best-known spokesperson: “Republicans buy sneakers, too.” So little as a day spent in the real world would reveal that Michael Jordan knows of what he speaks. No manufacturer, or sporting entity, can afford to continually ignore and/or deliberately antagonize its base without suffering deep consequences up to and including closing shop. Nike is not invincible. If it continues to crank out ads such as this, it will discover this to be true the hard way.