Dakota Beacon

The Paris Olympics have been quite the magnet for controversy this year.  It began with what many saw as a shocking display of obscenity in the opening ceremonies, including what some regarded as a blasphemous interpretation of the Last Supper, the famous religious work of Leonardo Da Vinci.  Some claimed the resemblance was pure coincidence.   On a much brighter note, the Olympic “cauldron” was a hot air balloon - a nod to Paris, the birthplace of hot air balloons, rising majestically into the night sky.  The masked and hooded torchbearer darting about Paris was a fun idea.  Very medieval Paris in the spirit of Robert Louis Stevenson, really.

Celine Dion stole the show, however, in a remarkable and courageous appearance.  In a beautiful and dramatic production on the Eiffel Tower, Dion absolutely stunned the world audience with Piaf/Monnot’s “Hymne a l’amour”, with sparkling fireworks complemented by their reflection in rain.  Dion has been sidelined, as we know, for about four years due to severe health issues.  Her brilliant and emotional comeback was worthy of an Olympic champion.  She did it in style.  (If you did not see it, regardless of your opinion of the rest of the Olympics scandals, please do yourself a great favor and watch it!)  

A very interesting footnote to the (mostly bizarre and obscene) opening ceremonies was a total blackout in Paris . . . with the lone exception being the Basilica de le Sacre Coeur, built in 1870 as a penance  for the apparent moral decline in France and in French culture.  It stood alone on its hill in Montmartre, a beacon of light in a darkened city.  Perhaps a sign.

Other Olympic stories were, to say the least, unsavory.  Here, specifically, I refer to the boxing match between Imane Kelif (Algeria) and Angelina Carini (Italy), which ended badly for Carini, and Lin Yu-Ting (Taiwan)  and Sitora Turdibekova (Uzbekistan), which also ended badly for Turdibekova.  The problem here is that these two “winners”, Lin and Kelif, are men competing against women.  In a boxing event.  

This is where “feminism” has taken us.  Women can do anything now.  Open their own car doors, pick up their own handkerchiefs and go into the boxing ring against men in the Olympics.  Good show, ladies (er, I mean, ah, whatever).  Congress is now considering a bill to require women to register for the draft, which makes great sense in an era when the United States, a diminishing world power, has delusionary intentions to intervene in political and military matters around the world where many cultures have different concepts of how women are to be treated.  And the Olympics committee is permitting men who “identify as women” to go into the ring against biological women in boxing competitions (and no doubt other contests).  

In the case of Kelif and of Lin, the International Boxing Association had already disqualified these two on the basis that they both have X and Y chromosomes, meaning that they are men.  The men in question have not contested this.  If they were women they would have two X chromosomes, not X and Y.  It has been noted that the IBA is “Russian led”.  If so, the Russians are in the right again.  The IBA stands by its ruling.  So does the IOC, unfortunately.  Their spokesperson has said God forbid they should go back to the dark days of sex testing (will drug testing fall next?).  But what else should we expect?  Women and women’s organizations have been campaigning for this now for many decades.  What a triumph.

Carini’s bout lasted 46 seconds before she “quit”, as the headlines put it, and much has been made of her dedicating the match to her late father who mistakenly advised her that she could “do anything”.  Perhaps he would have condoned her flying from the top of a tall building.  I hate to criticize the dead, but what father in his right mind should have counseled his young, beautiful daughter to go into professional boxing?  Is this really the best he could hope for, for her?  What a crappy goal.  Sorry - that is my opinion and I stand by it.  Sure, he figured she would only have to beat up other women, but is this really the highest and best use of a life?  I know it sounded romantic and “legendary” to conjure up the image of the loving dad here, but let’s just stop.  

Carini went ahead and stepped into the ring with someone she knew to be a full-grown, adult man.  What was she thinking?  Was she hearing her late dad’s voice in her head saying “You got this”?  After being brutalized by this cynical jerk for 46 seconds she “quit” - pulled the plug on it and broke down crying, saying she’d never been hit so hard in her life.  What did she expect?  A man in an Olympic bout to pull his punches?  How silly.  Don’t get me wrong.  I hate to see anyone beaten up, and women and children in particular.  But did she really think she would beat a man going full-out to win?  Or did she think he’d hand it to her?  Well, he didn’t.  I guess he just wasn’t that gallant.  And she was upset and refused to shake his hand.  Imagine that.  Not shaking hands with the man who tried to beat the pulp out of a woman for a medal.  We are supposed to believe that Carini would get special treatment as a woman for competing as a woman against a man competing as a woman.  If so, she was trading on her sex, not her talent and acumen for beating people up.  She doubled down on her craven performance by backing down and recanting whatever she said in anger and disappointment (and pain) and even apologized to Kelif later for not shaking his hand after he pummeled her for profit.    

The whole world is circling wagons around Carini, taking her part, that the match was “unfair” as she alleged (when she was angry, that is).  I disagree.  Carini would have shown more moral courage and rectitude had she simply refused to enter the ring with this man.  Did she think she could wallop him?  Maybe, but then she would be beyond delusional.  What if she had said, “As an athlete committed to fair competition and the ideals of the Olympics, I will not enter the ring to box with a male.  Kelif is a male boxer.  If he wants to win an Olympic medal by beating up women, let him have my bout first.  Let him take home his medals, polish them, show them off to his friends, let him try to monetize them if he can.  I will not participate in a fraud.  It is demeaning to the sport and to women.”  She would have made a different kind of headline.  She would have stood up for the rights of women and of women athletes.  Instead she not only dutifully marched into the ring but when she knew she couldn’t win just quit and then instead of making the statement (albeit belatedly) she went along with it, betraying other women athletes in the process.  She’s no hero (or is it still “heroine”?).  She is a victim complicit in her own victimhood.  Not a star.  

Less has been said about Turdibekov’s loss.  She at least went the length and lost in a decision with one judge dissenting and giving his vote to her.  (Where did he get off?)  She went ahead and shook hands and then disappeared quietly with Team Uzbekistan.  She, too, let the world and women and women athletes down.  

Should we expect more of these young women?  After all, they have staked their fortune on dreams of being the best at beating others up.  Dreams that have been crushed by cruel fate and men masquerading as women.  Well, to me it seems that these stories are nothing but opportunities lost to be real champions - to stand up for truth and for what is right and just.  These women caved.  Perhaps their national teams “forced” them - who knows?  Apparently they didn’t back up their own team members - so far we have not heard objections from them.  But in the end it came down to their own integrity.  We have had many scandals in the past where athletes have been called out for drug enhancement, etc., or other infractions of the rules.  But why bother with that anymore?  All they should have to do is deny the infraction.  That’s what Kelif and Lin did.  That’s all they did.  

Perhaps women’s sports will self-check now, or perhaps they will persist in their “wokeness”.  As for sports, I don't much care.  If hitting others harder than they hit you is a good sport I can’t relate to it anyway.  Especially for women.  It is an abomination of our culture when women engage in this sport in the first place.  And these women are not people we should be looking up to.  Maybe we should allow ourselves to feel sorry for them.  

Riley Gaines is another matter, however.  This champion swimmer was robbed of the honor by a man.  Instead of cravenly accepting it or shaking his hand or giving lip service to injustice and fraud, she actually told the truth.  Gaines is, in this respect, an honorable person of integrity who is willing to tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may.  She might not be a “team player” in this regard but she is a person we should all respect.  She, unlike Carini and Turdibekov, actually landed a blow for women’s athletics.  She actually is a heroine.

It might be time, though, to re-evaluate our relationship with our culture.  Is the march of women into the roles of brutality and eventually warfare a good thing?  I would say not.  Call me old-fashioned, but really, what is the highest calling for women or for men, for that matter?  For millennia it has been the raising of children their teaching and forming of their character, the imparting of our culture and history to the next generation and the next and the next, to do all possible to send forward the positive message of our culture and history, an unbroken thread connecting us to our forebears.  If not all mothers, women have been nurses, physicians, teachers, caregivers.  For men it has been to provide for and protect the children and the women who are so essential to our future.  If not their own children or wives, for others.  Without this dynamic it is arguable that we cannot continue.  

Our culture carries with it values such as justice, beauty, logic, to some extent science and other life skills.  It also embraces our religious beliefs, not all alike but with similar purpose.  We continue this heritage through literacy, through art and music, through the work of our hands.  Women have historically done this.  Men have created great works, written great music, great books, painted and sculpted great art, built beautiful structures  to house our cultural progress - temples, courts, magnificent edifices of commerce and business as well as forts and castles to defend it.  Men have historically often had to go to war to protect it.  Athletics have played important parts in this history, it is true.  And they have developed into an institution of their own which women, understandably, want to enjoy and appreciate as well.  

We can have sports for women without training them to become brutes.  We can have appropriate rules and sports which do not result in abuse of women (either by men or by other women).  That’s not too much to demand of the Olympics.  An opportunity to correct the IOC was missed by these two wronged athletes, Carini and Turdibekov and their teams.  In fact, their teams should have stood up for them and for justice.  Where were they?  It would not be unreasonable for these teams to have pulled out of the Olympics altogether to make a very important statement.   It is never right to stand up for or defend injustice and abuse.  That is what these women did, and their teams were apparently silent.  In any case, the Olympics have tarnished their reputation with this abuse of logic and of women.

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