By Natalie Sandoval
Eileen Gu, the American-born and-raised skier who competes for China, is a hero and a role model. The U.S. men’s hockey team, comprised of Americans competing for America, are ghouls who deserve no less than total career ruin.
So go the conclusions of the left-wing media’s estimable sports writers.
Gu appeared on the cover of Time Magazine in late January, posing for a glamorous photoshoot for the magazine.
Charlotte Harpur, writing for The New York Times’ (NYT) The Athletic, lauds Gu’s analytical mind and her many Olympic medals: “You would be forgiven if you thought Gu was a quasi-human robot expertly created by artificial intelligence, so eloquent are her responses to the media,” says Harpur.
“The scientist, politician, skier, model, and student is like a magician, the audience dazzled by her mastery but somewhat irked by how she does it.”
Another article from The Athletic praises Gu in a similar manner: “She is engaging, illuminating and introspective in this setting, seizing her biggest stage to showcase some of her greatest skills, effortlessly dancing between English and Mandarin, discussing President Trump one minute and the physics of her jumps the next.”
“She’s become bigger than skiing. Bigger than sport.”
Alex Abad-Santos, writing for left-wing outlet Vox, celebrated Gu as a “winner,” while calling the U.S. men’s hockey team “loser[s].”
“Even though they won a momentous and hard-fought gold medal game against chief rival Canada, the US men’s hockey team and its fans barely got a chance to savor it. Thanks to an Instagram Live and subsequent leaked video, we know the players partied with [Federal Bureau of Investigtion] Director Kash Patel and took a congratulatory phone call from President Donald Trump,” Abad-Santos complained.
Jerry Brewer, writing for The Athletic, also scorns the U.S. men’s hockey team for being too friendly with the president of the United States.
“In the immediate aftermath of their victory, the team took a customary, congratulatory call from President Donald Trump, and some players laughed at a misogynistic joke about the gold-winning women’s hockey team that many Americans wouldn’t find funny.”
Truly, where would we be without journalists to tell us which jokes are funny?
During the call, Trump told the team that he would invite them to the White House, adding, “We’re going to have to bring the women’s team, you do know that?”
“I do believe I probably would be impeached, okay?”
The premise of the joke — that the left is hyper-sensitive to perceived slights against supposedly marginalized groups — seems to have been lost on left-wing journalists.
Brewer admits that the hockey team’s actions were not objectionable in and of themselves.
“In normal times, this would be an obligatory celebration for a championship team. They take presidential calls. They party too hard. They visit Washington and stroll through the corridors of power.”
“But this isn’t a neutral climate. This isn’t a neutral president. And in a nation this polarized, the proximity carries weight whether the players are being intentional or merely naive. America no longer experiences these rituals in the same way, and it may never again. Athletes would be wise to recognize that, in this climate, celebration is easily repurposed into political capital.” (RELATED: ‘Stupid, Self-Absorbed And Misogynistic’: Keith Olbermann Crashes Out About Team USA Hockey, President Trump Invite)
Is any president “neutral”? Of course not. Former President Barack Obama certainly had his detractors. But the left believes their politics and politicians to be neutral. They believe any reasonable observer of reality would arrive at the same set of conclusions as themselves: Love is love, abortion is healthcare, no human being is illegal on stolen land, etc.
Mary Clarke, a sports writer for USA Today, claims the “United States men’s team failed to meet the moment and then some.” Clarke, like Brewer, takes issue with the men’s hockey team daring to laugh at Trump’s joke: “It’s especially disappointing considering the lip service the men’s team paid to the women throughout the Olympics.”
Could it be possible that they simply have a sense of humor? Or that they hoped to demonstrate some courtesy to the leader of the free world?
“To laugh at a joke disparaging your United States teammates and peers who won the same accomplishments as you just a few days prior is incredibly disappointing behavior.”
There’s no tone quite so grating as that of a hall monitor.
