So Time magazine has labeled greatest-of-all-time gymnast Simone Biles as the “Athlete of the Year,” not so much for her athletic prowess, which is considerable, but for taking herself out of several Olympic events when she knew she wasn’t mentally prepared to compete — thus starting a national conversation about athletic competition and mental/physical health.
Biles didn’t drop out of the events because she just didn’t feel like competing that day but because she had come down with a case of “the twisties” — which, despite the silly name, is a strange and dangerous affliction in which gymnasts and other athletes lose their focus and their sense of spacial awareness, not a good thing when you’re upside down on a balance beam. Indeed, Biles could have easily injured herself seriously had she continued in the events.
Ignoring the basic facts of the case, more than a few on the right used Time’s award as an excuse to shit on Biles and lament America’s alleged liberal “softness.”
“The old adage was that ‘winners never quit and quitters never win,'” wrote Jack Davis at the right-wing Western Journal. “But in 2021, quitters can be named Athlete of the Year.”
On BigLeaguePolitiics.com, meanwhile, writer Shane Trejo threw shade on Biles and what he called her “disappointing and pathetic display during the Olympics” — as well as the “myriad of lame excuses” she gave “for why she let her country down.” He blasted Time for enabling this sort of behavior with the “many absurd rationales [they used] to justify Biles wilting in the limelight.”
Apparently Trejo wants gymnasts to risk serious injury for a chance at a Gold medal, which is not going to go to a gymnast with the “twisties” in the first place.
Trejo continued on with a bizarre tirade that managed to work COVID into the mix:
The article makes the claim that selfishness and surrender are virtuous acts in this day and age, using the mental health decline due to COVID-19 mass hysteria that has been fomented by the media as the excuse to lionize Biles for her Olympic collapse.
He wound up the article by suggesting that Biles was cashing in on something he called her “minority privilege.”
Perhaps Biles’ failure is an example of minority fragility on display and the excuses for her are an example of minority privilege. Biles couldn’t measure up on the stage and live up to her hype. This is a stain on her record, not a reason to celebrate her.
Over on thepostmillennial.com, Erin Holmes went so far as to suggest that Biles and her supporters could very well hasten the downfall and ultimate collapse of American civilization.
Let’s just say that Holmes isn’t happy with athletes speaking up about pretty much anything, from racial justice or their own physical safety. Unlike Biles and other “woke” athetes, Holmes wrote,
There are dozens of stories of athletes who stood for God, family, country, or team, who stood apart from the social justice crowd that stands for individualism. American wokeism normalizes hatred for patriotism, and on a world stage, protests make the country look unstable.
And then she started talking about the fall of Florence — the city-state, that is, not the Progressive insurance lady — declaring that
replacing meritorious competition with righteous indignation, makes the eventual disintegration of fair competition imminent, just as it did in Florence’s Medici era.
Okey dokey then.
I checked out Reddit to see if any of the usual suspects were talking about l’affaire Biles, and found the most, er, lively discussion in the Red Pilly “walkaway” subreddit, devoted to those “who can no longer accept the current ideology of liberalism.”
A commenter called Necessary-Window5649 wrote:
Remember when athelete was a term used as someone who outperforms due to incredible will and determination. Now those qualities are seen as “privelage” or “exclusinary” because it excludes regular people. That’s the whole point of athleticism and it’s rewards; To see people outperforming basic limitations of the human body.
By 2030 the only athletes will be overweight and trans
idkmanseemskindagay broke Godwin’s Law with their comment, noting that Time “also put Hitler as person of the year before, so this isn’t surprising.” Which is true — though that “award” only reflected his world-historical importance; they weren’t giving him a pat on the back. Is idk here comparing Biles to the H-man?
But the best comment, by which I mean the worst, came from somebody calling themselves senorbonerbritches. suggesting that next year the award could go to
a hobo that jumped over a puddle to suck some dick for crack. That’s pretty much the level of respect I have for this whiney twat.
I’m sure the feeling would be mutual, my dude, if Biles knew or cared who you are.
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I just heard Time has selected Elon Musk as their “person of the year”, in what seems like a vindication of the man’s obsessive attention seeking. Since when has there been a separate “athlete of the year”?
The implicit message, beside the racist one, is (as often) ‘This isn‘t the way they/we did it when I was young, things were good then, so this is wrong.’
I can’t help but remember Patton Oswalt’s routine about getting parenting advice from his parents: When he rejects some of it, he’s met with ‘Well, that‘s the way _we_ did it and _you_ came-out o.k.….’ his response is a firm ‘No! I’m not “o.k.”—I get up on stage and talk about my _dick_ for a living.’.
Nostalgia is the only argument some practices can muster.