First, history gave us Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Then, we had Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech. After that, we had Kennedy telling the world, “We are all Berliners now,” and then Reagan commanding Gorbachev, “Tear down this wall!”
Well, stand aside, you has-beens. Now we have been blessed with the gift of Olympic athletes — USING THEIR PLATFORM!
Way to go, leftists. You’ve managed to ruin the Olympics. You ruined Super Bowl halftime shows. You ruined beer commercials, Disney cartoons, and school libraries. Is there anything you touch that doesn’t immediately go to s**t?
Front and center, I was never that big into watching the Olympics. Yeah, yeah, I know — the opening ceremonies are cool, sorta, maybe, I guess. I got dragged into watching the opening ceremony in Milan earlier this week. But I’ll admit that, while expecting the worst, I was pleasantly surprised. I guess after Paris, the bar was pretty low.
A tad too avant-garde at times, the Milan ceremony was nevertheless a tasteful and confident assertion of Italian history, culture, and humor. Andrea Bocelli knocked Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma” out of the stadium. It was a complete 180 from the putrescent sewer into which the French slithered two years ago.
But it didn’t take long for the pride of Italy to give way to the self-loathing narcissism of America.
Freestyle skier Hunter Hess USED HIS PLATFORM to share his thoughts about federal immigration raids, stating, “It brings up mixed emotions to represent the U.S. right now. It’s a little hard. There’s obviously a lot going on that I’m not the biggest fan of. Just because I’m wearing the flag doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the U.S.”
When asked for her thoughts, skier Mikaela Shiffrin USED HER PLATFORM to respond, “I can read something that I have written, if you guys don’t mind.” She then read from her cell phone, stating, “Peace is not just the absence of conflict. Peace is the creation of an environment where all can flourish regardless of race, color, creed, religion, gender, class, caste, or any other social markers of difference.”
That’s real deep. It’s also not something that she had “written.” It’s something that Nelson Mandela had written, and that Charlize Theron had repeated during the opening ceremonies not 24 hours prior.
No doubt holding back tears, Shiffrin continued, “For me, this relates to the Olympics. I’m really hoping to show up and represent my own values. Values of inclusivity, values of diversity and kindness.”
Do those values include plagiarism, unoriginality, and virtue signaling?
Skier Gus Kenworthy USED HIS PLATFORM to post a picture of the phrase “f*** ice” written in the snow with urine. Classy. I’d toss you the “Your family must be proud” line, but I suspect they actually are proud, which kinda deflates my insult.
Gus grew up in the United States, went to school in the United States, and enjoys the protection of the United States. But he competes for Britain. Not a peep from him about his thoughts — much less his criticism — about the British government turning a blind eye for decades to Muslim rape gangs on English soil.
The embarrassing performative art continued. Freestyle skier Chris Lillis said he feels “heartbroken about what’s happened in the United States.” Cross-country skier Jessie Diggins wrote that he is “racing for an American people who stand for love, for acceptance, for compassion, honesty, and respect for others. I do not stand for hate or violence or discrimination.” Outspoken proponent of LGBTQ rights and Olympic figure skater (in that order) Amber Glenn said, “A lot of people say, ‘You’re just an athlete. Stick to your job, shut up about politics.’ But politics affect us all.”
Good heavens, is it possible for you to be any more numbingly boring? Are you reading directly off the yard sign, or did you take the time to commit it to memory?
When asked to comment, the U.S. Olympic Committee released a statement saying it values “the expression of Team USA athletes and believes their right to advocate for racial and social justice, and to be a positive force for change, absolutely aligns with the fundamental values of equality that define Team USA.”
But does the committee also value the right of athletes to advocate for, let’s say, gun rights? School choice? The right to publicly disagree with the pronoun mafia? The right to be openly Jewish on a college campus? The right to attend a Christian school without being murdered by trans terrorists?
Relax, committee members. Nobody is disputing the athletes’ “right to advocate.” Yes, the athletes can say whatever they want whenever they want to whomever they want as loud as they want, and they can stomp and shriek and cross their arms and hold their breath until they’re blue in the face, and nobody can do anything about it.
But that’s the cool thing about free speech. It goes both ways. And if the boys and girls playing around in the snow want to mouth off to show how grown-up they are, then they open themselves up to rebuttal and rebuke. Whatever criticism they bring down upon their heads is their fault and theirs alone. Those are the rules.
Nobody asked them to cause division by essentially discriminating against half of their fellow citizens. They have the right to USE THEIR PLATFORM should they choose to do so. And so do we. And so does the President.
There are two reasons these athletes are receiving a significant amount of backlash.
First, we’ve come to expect this behavior from sheltered celebrities and performers, who live their privileged, pampered lives behind high walls and private security. But Olympian athletes were always thought to have been made from the sterner ingredients of Americana. The Olympic commercials treat us to their rags-to-riches stories, of how they were born and bred on Main Street USA, how mom and dad worked double shifts to pay for the skiing lessons, and so on and so forth. Most of them likely grew up in areas that were not filthy rich and had friends and neighbors whose political opinions were not rigidly uniform.
In other words, they should know better.
Second, you know what you never see at the Olympics? You never see the French criticizing their nation. Or the Norwegians. Or the Bulgarians. Or the Columbians. Or the Bahrainis. Or the Indians. Or the Moroccans. Or the Kazakhs. Or the Japanese. Or ANYBODY except Americans.
Why is that? One of two possibilities is happening here. The first possibility is that every single non-American athlete in every single Olympic games is in complete agreement with everything their home government is doing 100% of the time, and hence has no reason to USE THEIR PLATFORM!
The second possibility is that, despite their personal politics and private misgivings, every non-American athlete nevertheless has enough class, decency, and common sense to understand that they are there to represent their entire nation, even their fellow citizens and elected leaders with whom they disagree.
And we back home are sick of it. The plumbers and schoolteachers and policemen and grocery clerks who don’t get to play in the snow for a living or see their faces on cereal boxes are sick of rooting for you total strangers as representatives of our entire country, only to be backstabbed by your shameless and ignorant self-righteousness.
How’s Milan? Is it nice? Enjoy it, because most of the Americans you detest couldn’t dream of ever being able to afford a trip there. And that’s not because they’re boorish or uncultured. It’s because they have jobs to work and children to raise and taxes to pay and homes to protect.
Our American athletes should wonder why the press only asks them these divisive, politically-charged questions, and not anyone else from any other country. Maybe the press isn’t interested in the merits of your opinion, which no doubt mirrors exactly the opinions of the “journalists” asking. Maybe they’re interested in manipulating your vanity and narcissism. Maybe they’re perfectly comfortable taking your fifteen minutes of fame and using it for their own political ends rather than to showcase your athletic prowess.
How sad. You don’t even realize you’re being used. And when the media is done with you, when you have served their purpose, nobody will remember you for whatever event you competed in. You will be remembered for how petty and juvenile you showed yourself to be when you betrayed your country.
As you may have guessed by now, I don’t take seriously anyone who says they “use their platform.” It’s simply one from a myriad of trendy leftist phrases, such as “I recognize my privilege” or “this is stolen land,” designed not to right any supposed wrong, but to shine attention on the virtue of the person mouthing it.
What you call your “platform” is nothing more than an irritating loudspeaker that nobody asked you to turn on, and whose decibel level far exceeds your intellectual capacity for rational thought or coherent argument. None of you morons congratulating yourselves for USING YOUR PLATORM has uttered a single sentence that cannot be effortlessly refuted by a basic grasp of factual reality.
You USE YOUR PLATFORM to criticize ICE and the deportation of illegal criminals. You know who doesn’t have a platform? Who will never have a platform?
Laken Riley. Rachel Morin. Mollie Tibbetts. Jocelyn Nungaray. Tessa Tranchant. Ali Kunhardt. Kate Steinle. Ilias Mavros. Katie Abraham. Luis Joscan Nanez Lopez. Taliyah Crochet. Rylan Oncale. Sarah Root. Maverick Martzen. Ivory Smith. Riordan Powell. Anya Varfolomeev. Nicholay Osokin.
Many of the aforementioned were children and teenagers. All were murdered by illegals. This is but a minuscule sampling of a much longer (and wholly preventable) list, for any athlete looking to USE THEIR PLATFORM for something other than self-promotion.
I keep telling myself that these pompous harlequins represent a tiny handful of the 232 Americans competing in Milan. I want to believe that, deep down, the rest of our athletes are simply grateful to be competing and are happy to represent all Americans.
I want to believe that most of these athletes are like Jasmine Jones. Jasmine Jones is a single mother who gave birth to her daughter Jade in 2021. To provide Jade with a better life, Jasmine joined the Air Force in 2023. She is competing in Milan as a bobsled racer, and is “honored to have this opportunity.”
She continued, "I feel like being able to represent my country, as well as being an athlete for my country, it definitely brings a different meaning and a different caliber.… I'm thankful for being an airman and representing my country in that aspect. It definitely ties it together and brings different meaning and how much more I have to give."
Wow. That’s quite a different outlook than the skier who posts pictures of yellow snow.
And Jasmine isn’t alone.
Kelly Curtis, another mother and active duty airman, is competing in Milan as a skeleton racer. "After the Games, I'll be right back at Aviano Air Force Base doing my job," she said. "But for now, I have the privilege of representing the U.S. Air Force on the world stage, and I don't take that lightly." No speaking tours or commercials for her after the Olympics. It’s back to defending Americans. All Americans.
American hockey player Brady Tkachuk told reporters, "Being able to represent the U.S. at this stage in the Olympics is one of the greatest honors I’ve ever had. Truly grateful to be here and represent the red, white, and blue."
Verily, these patriotic Americans represent all of us, regardless of who they voted for or what issues they care about. And I hope there are a lot more athletes like them on Team America, because they have something you can’t find anywhere on a “platform.”
That something is called humility.
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