You don’t need a PhD in Critical Race Theory to notice that a lot of the knuckleheads talking shit about Simone Biles for dropping out of the Olympics are white dudes who couldn’t do a single cartwheel to save their lives. Piers Morgan. Charlie Kirk. Ben Shapiro.
Oh, and this dude, Doug Gottlieb of Fox Sports, who seems mad that Biles’ mental health isn’t bad enough to keep her from sports altogether.
“Let’s not mislabel a mental health episode, where you don’t perform well because of the immense amount of pressure over being judged as the greatest of all time,” he declared, “and a true mental health issue where you shouldn’t be competing in sports.”
Alas, CNN’s Brianna Keilar happened to notice this trend of “ignorant white dudes talking shit about a black woman who survived sexual abuse at the hands of former team doctor Larry Nassar and went on to become the greatest gymnast ever.” In a segment on the network she tore into Morgan, Kirk, and Gottlieb for their terrible takes, noting that all of them could learn “a thing or two … about mental toughness” from Biles.
The CNN chyron read: “White male talking heads question courage of Simone Biles.” Which seems like a pretty accurate description of what was going on.
But Gottlieb is having a little fit over it.
I dunno, dude. Perhaps they used that chyron because “white male assholes question courage of Simone Biles” wouldn’t have made it past the network censors.
Note: If you decide that for some reason you need to criticize Simone Biles, this clever little decision tree on McSweeny’s will let you know if you can.
H/T — Thanks to Mediaite for covering this controversy so fully.
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You know, concerning this whole thing, it’s too bad that we don’t have some sort of system in place for athletes who can’t continue, like backup athletes or something. That might work in this situation… oh wait, it did.
Next thought: Do we care about this backup young woman and her chance to do some cool Olympic stuff? Guess not. We have a target we can bash instead, so who cares?
/sarcasm
Simone Biles won multiple gold medals at the 2018 World’s with kidney stones. None of these mediocre white gasbags could’ve done anything like that and they need to shut their fucking faces.
These hot takes are making me so mad. I was not a gymnast, but I was a diver and there’s some similarities in the sports in that you’re flying through the air flipping and/or twisting and both sports are very much mental. I never was anywhere near an Olympic level and I’ve hurt myself panicking and freezing up during a dive. Someone like Simone Biles is doing things that could literally kill her if she’s off.
I’ve been ranty about this for 2 days now, and apparently it’s not going away.
Anyway, I’m cheering so hard for my Minnesota queen Suni Lee tomorrow and also Rebecca Andrade of Brazil who’s come back from so many injuries to qualify in 1st now that Simone is out of the AA.
Jfl at a largely white, normie-stuffed “news channel” trying to pander and seem woke by slamming other white people like that. The only people they are fooling are their largely delusional, white liberal audiences who are more focused on hating certain subsets of their own rather than actually lifting one alabaster-colored finger to help someone from the demographics they claim to care oh-so-fucking-much about. If it weren’t for the fact that bigoted attitudes are coded as being something that only crass-billionaires and rural people indulge in, these people wouldn’t give two shits; they are more concerned with having the appearance of being intelligent and classy than they are with actually doing “progressivism” of any kind.
I wanna line these assholes up and have Simone vault over them all or something.
I think, sportsmanship-wise, she’s to be commended for not having a giant ego. She wasn’t feeling it, so rather than jeopardize the team (all of whom worked as hard and long as she did), she benched herself. That is a very sensible decision.
She is infinitely more mature than all the assholes who are trashing her. Combined.
@ProNEETheus, the
For the love of Katie, you’ve posted a comment here too.
You seem to know a lot about the motives of members of the media and progressives. Could it be that this knowledge is something you made up.
@WWTH
I have a feeling her critics are good with that.
@ProNEETheus, the
I’ve gone to movie theaters that did less projecting than you.
@Kat
No, it’s just plain psychologizing; normies are unbelievably easy to read, and to predict as well. Your minds are like grub worms writhing about in a glass jar before my watchful eye – I can see their every turn and twist, not one of their movements remains hidden from me.
Took a whole tube of KY to come up with that metaphor, did it?
@ProNEETheus, the
Snort. I’ll take your purple prose as a confession.
@Kat
A confession of what? That I am once again proven right in the face of normie obliviousness?
@Nequam
You think you’re being clever, but you’re not. You’re just making noise. You come on the internet and read things about people that you hate in order to feel superior to someone else. In reality, you are just another unremarkable wage-cuck, forever doomed to a life of inconvenience and discomfort. You are wholly lacking in a support system of any kind, one missed check away from a life looking like a distressed alley-cat yowling at anyone you come across for assistance.
Whereas you are none of the above…
Edit: I would also point out most of the people here are far from “normie”.
Gaw, this troll must be an IMAX employee of the year.
Whatta projectionist!
Seriously, if you feel so bad about being financially insecure that your method of coping is to insult strangers on the internet, you need to lobby for stronger social nets and possibly free therapy.
@ProNEETus : given your predictions are consistenly wrong, you might want to change your opinion on the predictability of “normies”.
Also, notably, almost nobody is average. The concept of normis have that problem that it apply to no one when you take individuals ; normality only work to predict the behavior of a group.
If you want a new person to really torch, how about Miles Mathis:
“Clearly, she quit because she was sick of being forced to lie [about Nassar] by these bastards in Intelligence who now control everything.”
http://mileswmathis.com/biles.pdf
Oh good, another troll, who is just as predictable and boring as the rest. “Normies” huh? This overwrought purple prose seems familiar but I honestly can’t remember who it was.
Anyway, won’t someone think of the white men, the real victims in all this?
I wish they had the guts to come out and say what they really mean. They want her to get hurt because it fits their narrative somehow. And even then, they’d tear her apart for competing when she wasn’t mentally fit.
Aww, it’s a troll who flings big words around like poo! Only ProNEETheus doesn’t fling words around very gracefully or efficiently. To paraphrase one of my favorite authors, the power of English lies in its ability to move, to persuade, and to illumine the majesty of thought. Unfortunately, ProNEETheus’ thoughts are only majestic in the sense that a cardboard Burger King crown can make a child a monarch.
Times like this I miss Scildfreja. Ah, well. Perhaps if we start referring to ProNEETheus as “ducky” it will help us miss Scildfreja less?
Also, the woman who did replace her won Gold. Did we all fail to notice that? So let’s recap. Simone Biles pulls out over concerns for her own well-being and that she’d be a hindrance to the team. The backup won Gold. This is what’s called win-win in the eyes of anyone who isn’t a giant fragile man baby.
@Some Chick
The purple prose is so popular with a certain kind of troll, it makes it difficult to distinguish one from the other. It’s a pity that the trolls who roam through here are so bland in their pomposity. A little more originality and creativity in their written communication would make them stand out amongst the troll pack.
@VP : but they don’t *want* to be creative. They want to blend with the pack. They think being like every other edgelord will give them status.
It’s not that they cannot be original if their life depended on it ; it’s that they actively refuse to be original.
Notably, it’s a “normal” human instinct to try to blend it ; but the far right specifically provoke it, because a lot of what they do is create magic formulas that are supposed to give them happiness and fulfillment if they follow it. People all following the same formula are bound to not look terribly original.
And as have said so eloquently XKCD, they will live their live having an epiphany after another about what is holding them back, which will all fail, because what prevent their dreams from realizing is that the guy having them is them.
@Ohlmann
Sadly true, that.
Funny, ProNEETheus uses neurodiverse people to simply imply people are somehow wrong, just as ableist in the other direction. My tourette syndrome gives a certain emphasis on the literal aspects of non-literal language and, white people don’t literally exist. No human being is that color. Whiteness is a political group corrupted by it’s historical origin and ProNEETheus offers nothing of substance, just weak dismissal of the post with an assertion of wrongness.
I am in no group with ProNEETheus.
@ ProNEETheus, the
Except most of these people you, most likely a white person, are bashing? Most of them are pretty well known for donating to charities that help minority communities. Many of them are well known for actual activist work. Most of all, they all use their platforms not only to take bigots to task, but also to broadcast issues and spread awareness of tools and organizations to help.
What do dirt bags like Doug Gottlieb, Ben Shapiro, Charlie Kirk, and Piers Morgan do? They sit around on their overly privileged behinds, accusing people of minority status who are in poverty of being shiftless and lazy. While doing nothing to help improve the situation themselves. In fact they exacerbate the issues that affect minority communities, by not only fighting against them tooth and nail, but demanding their own following do the same.
Never mind the fact that attacking white news casters for calling out, rightly so in this case, the cishet white men attacking Simone Biles? That’s hypocritical to say the least. Not to mention completely tone deaf.
Also nice of you to mention that you were doing “psychologizing” of so called “normies” is a pretty big red flag. Anyone even remotely acquainted with psychology as a study knows better than to do that. That’s what we have sociology for. Attempting to psychologize a large demographic is already bad, doing it with a term as ill defined and nebulous as “normies” is even worse.
We can; however, apply some sociological standards to the commentators attacking Biles over benching herself for her and her team’s own good. Are they women? No. Are any of them black? No. Are any of them Olympic athletes, especially gymnasts? No. With those basic factors against them… Do they know what the hell they’re talking about? Not in the slightest! Conclusion? The rinsing they’re getting over their ignorant and self centered statements is richly deserved.
I wasn’t following that close. It was the backup who got gold?
That’s beautiful. And to me is more proof that Simone Biles knew what she was doing.
She removed the risk of injuring herself by doing a dangerous thing when her head and body weren’t cooperating with eachother. And it couldn’t have been easy to make that call.
And she gave a team-mate a chance to shine.
I know they aren’t likely to read it here, but congratulations to the both of them.