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Orlando Sentinel
Orlando Sentinel
Sport
George Diaz

George Diaz: Caitlyn Jenner's ESPY was never a profile in courage

So what has Caitlyn Jenner done to promote and raise awareness about LGBT issues in the past year?

Posed for a Sports Illustrated cover with her Olympic gold medal draped around her neck.

Completed the second season of her reality show" I Am Cait."

Took photos trying on three different gowns _ shared by Kim Kardashian via Snapchats _ prior to The ESPYs show Wednesday night.

Endorsed Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential candidate for a party with an official platform that disapproves of homosexuality, same-sex marriage and transgender rights.

Color me not surprised in the least.

ESPN went all edgy and trendy at the ESPYs last year, when it awarded Jenner _ formerly Bruce Jenner, 1976 Olympic gold medal decathlete _ the Arthur Ashe Courage Award.

It was a great honor. Or maybe not, when you consider this is ESPN's made-up award that's presented on its own made-up criteria for its own made-up TV show.

The Arthur Ashe Courage Award is given to individuals who "transcend sports." At least the network got it right this year by giving the award to Zaevion Dobson, the 15-year-old Tennessee high school football player who was killed by gunfire last December while protecting two young women in a drive-by shooting incident.

But I wonder if ESPN wants a mulligan for 2015? Give Jenner credit by breaking out of her torturous disguise she was living as man. But there's no thread of transcending anything beyond that.

At her essence, Jenner is part of the attention-obsessed Kardashian posse, a Vanity Fair cover girl and once starred in the Village People comedy, "Can't Stop the Music," in 1980.

I suspected all along it was about the glitz and the glamour and the eye candy when this deal went down a year ago, and Caitlyn Jenner has done nothing to disprove that.

Oh wait. The Daily Beast reports that in the second season of her reality show, Caitlyn is embarking "on a cross-country road trip with six other women, presumably with the aim of raising awareness about LGBT issues. The first episode features a heated debate over the current presidential candidates."

"She could care less about women. She cares about herself," Jenner says of Hillary Clinton on the bus.

Got it. And a word of unsolicited advice:

Buy a mirror, honey, before making such astute observations about other people.

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