Sports

DAILY WIRE notes the attempted shaming by the Leftist rag WaPo:

The Washington Post on Tuesday attempted to shame the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team that defeated the Russian team in what is known as the “Miracle on Ice” because some appeared with President Donald Trump.

To briefly recap: The men responsible for defeating Russia at hockey during the Cold War are now being harassed by Democrats and the Left for appearing with the president of the United States.

The Post spoke to exactly one player from the team, Mike Eruzione, in order to get him to suggest he regretted wearing one of Trump’s “Keep America Great” hats when he appeared on stage with the president Friday night in Las Vegas, Nevada. Eruzione has been getting harassed by people who despise Trump, yet the Post spun the story as if the team deserved the harassment because some of them dared to wear hats that Trump’s political opponents have deemed racist. Many people simply refuse to allow the media or the Left the ability to determine what is and isn’t considered a hate symbol. For the record, the media and the Left would have deemed campaign gear from any Republican candidate as hateful.

But now the media has turned its attention to hockey players. It also should be noted that the media does this to any recognizable person who appears on stage with Trump. When asked about the Left-led “backlash,” Eruzione told the post: “You going to light into me, too? We’re getting killed!”…..

Dan Bongino posted this on his TWITTER:

(More of this “miracle on ice” can be found HERE)

1980 USA Hockey Team Story – Part 1 of 3
1980 USA Hockey Team Story – Part 2 of 3
1980 USA Hockey Team Story – Part 3 of 3
The ENTIRE game can be found HERE

Some of the comments that followed Bongino’s post are pretty funny:

It is nearly as heart-warming as the recap video of the 2016 election night results.
I saw @BernieSanders in the stands with his USSR jersey on…sad day for him
Can you imagine the look on Bernie’s face?
Thanks for that Toxic masculinity at it’s finest.
Definitely! But after Trump beat Hillery it became the 2nd greatest upset ever.
Between this and Ronald Reagan becoming President, these are the 2 events that gave America its spine and swagger back. Jimmy Carter almost took us down the drain. The miracle on ice showed us we could still win. Reagan showed us how to do it consistently.
The USA as a country was in a malaise. WNEW played Even it up by Heart horns were honking people hugged it still is a one of a kind feeling.

A friend posted a picture of the back of my van, a sticker I print based off of him saying the “equal” sign looks like a “pause button” on a remote control:

Some interesting conversation ensued on his Facebook after this was posted. My main response is to the idea expressed by one person that this is not a big deal:

How is this such a huge topic? The percentage of the population on the planet is significantly low(< 1%). No one deserves to be discriminated against-but your over stating calling it a Huge topic as a whole. The vast majority of the general public doesn’t even know a transgender person.

I wish to reprint ans add to my response to the original ideas for cataloging here at RPT. My general first point was to note a very recent article by tennis legend, Martina Navratilova….

Martina Navratilova earlier had commented about the issue being unfair. She was slammed, and said she would educate herself better. She went and studied the issue more and came back MORE convinced about her position. I think she is still wrong in part thinking that a removal of a sex organ of mutilation to the body changes her statement “A man builds up muscle and bone density, as well as a greater number of oxygen-carrying red blood cells, from childhood,” —- BUT, even her position is anathema to the Democrat Party withing the past 5-years.

….Navratilova was chastised in December when she tweeted, “You can’t just proclaim yourself a female and be able to compete against women,” but then apologized and said she would “educate myself better” after she was accused of being transphobic.

After doing the research, however, she said that if anything, “my views have strengthened.”

“To put the argument at its most basic: a man can decide to be female, take hormones if required by whatever sporting organization is concerned, win everything in sight and perhaps earn a small fortune, and then reverse his decision and go back to making babies if he so desires,” she said.

In a Tuesday article, Out Magazine called her a “TERF,” or trans-exclusionary radical feminist, and said her comments were “scientifically unsound,” while McKinnon told Reuters that the tennis legend “trades on age-old stereotypes and stigma against trans women.”

Martina Navratilova Has Decided to Pivot to TERF

— Dr. Rachel McKinnon (@rachelvmckinnon) February 20, 2019
Gay Tennis Legend Martina Navratilova on Transgender Athletes: ‘It’s Insane and It’s Cheating’

— CNSNews.com (@cnsnews) February 19, 2019
Navratilova argued that it wasn’t enough to require reduced hormone levels, as many sports governing bodies have done in response to transgender athletes (CNS NEWS)

“A man builds up muscle and bone density, as well as a greater number of oxygen-carrying red blood cells, from childhood,” she wrote. “Training increases the discrepancy. Indeed, if a male were to change gender in such a way as to eliminate any accumulated advantage, he would have to begin hormone treatment before puberty. For me, that is unthinkable.”

The 62-year-old Navratilova also blasted those who wield the “transphobe” label to silence critics, calling it “just another form of tyranny.”

“I’m relatively tough and was able to stand up for myself in my Twitter exchange with McKinnon, but I worry that others may be cowed into silence or submission,” she said…..

(WASHINGTON TIMES)

Now, here is my direct response to the above “what’s the big deal” quoted:

…it is a huge topic because the professional Left is taking that less than 1% and demanding the majority change their concept of gender by state force and rules in women’s sports. In other words, in only 5-years this has changed women’s sports dramatically. Can’t wait for the next decade [<sarcasm]. The Washington Times notes just how unfair this issue is in high school sports.

Transgender Sprinters Finish 1St, 2Nd At Connecticut Girls Indoor Track Championships

“She” [Andraya Yearwood] recently finished second in the 55-meter dash at the state open indoor track championships. The winner, Terry Miller of Bloomfield High, is also transgender and set a girls state indoor record of 6.95 seconds. Yearwood finished in 7.01 seconds and the third-place competitor, who is not transgender [a girl^*], finished in 7.23 seconds.

Parents spend time and money to have their girls compete to attain a level of competition to enter either the Olympics or get a scholarship at a prestigious college (or both). This is no longer the case. The professional Left is ruining women’s sports in the name of “equality.”

Remember, you either want liberty, or equality, but you cannot have both.

* CR Commented On My Friend’s Original Post (OP):

There is so much wrong with your statement but your point I do agree with. A woman born in a male body should not be allowed to compete against a woman born in a female’s body. It’s not fair. I agree. I’m just not sure where the line should be drawn….

I try to help draw a line:

…it is simple to draw a line. If you have double X chromosomes, a vagina, a uterus, ovaries, menstrual periods and lactating breasts, you are a female. You should compete in female sports. If you dope (by taking estrogen to mask some male qualities) or were born with a penis and XY chromosomes, you should not compete in women’s sports.

Don’t be a racist and transphobic for attacking these two beautiful young Nubian queens who placed first and second in a high school track event.

I also expressed publicly a question many ask. That is, why do people simply support — uncritically — or promote actively these issues with little or no countering information to balance their knowledge of the issues? I always encourage people to be logically coherent and support these other “categories” of persons who “feel” someway about themselves:

Trans-Topics

These are issue being muddied with the arguments put forward by those pushing “equality.” BUT MY QUESTION IS WHY? I think David Mamet^*has a reasonable answer. It is the transferring of “Sainthood” to a growing secular culture. It gives people a sense of worth they think is beyond them… what use to be in the realm of faith, is now internalized. It offers a “metanarrative” for people to view the world. For instance, in a wonderful National Review article by Andy Ngo (last name sounds like “Noh”), he notes of Jussie Smollet’s bio line on his Twitter (the actor who faked a hate crime):

“While I can only speculate as to Smollett’s motives, perhaps a clue can be found in his bioline on Twitter. Smollett writes: ‘I am simply here to help save the world’.” (NATIONAL REVIEW | See more on my site: Hate Crime Hoaxes In The Trump Era)

The hubris involved in a political movement that thinks through legislation it can change gender and weather patterns is legend. And it is really a transfer of Sainthood:

MAMET

* [David Mamet] …is an American playwright, film director, screenwriter and author. He won a Pulitzer Prize and received Tony nominations for his plays Glengarry Glen Ross (1984) and Speed-the-Plow (1988). He first gained critical acclaim for a trio of off-Broadway 70s plays: The Duck Variations, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and American Buffalo. His plays Race and The Penitent, respectively, opened on Broadway in 2009 and previewed off-Broadway in 2017.

Feature films that Mamet both wrote and directed include House of Games (1987), Homicide (1991), The Spanish Prisoner (1997), Heist (2001), and Redbelt (2008). His screenwriting credits include The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981), The Verdict (1982), The Untouchables (1987), Hoffa (1992), Wag the Dog (1997), and Hannibal (2001). Mamet himself wrote the screenplay for the 1992 adaptation of Glengarry Glen Ross, and wrote and directed the 1994 adaptation of his play Oleanna (1992). He was the executive producer and frequent writer for the TV show The Unit (2006–2009).

Mamet’s books include: The Old Religion (1997), a novel about the lynching of Leo Frank; Five Cities of Refuge: Weekly Reflections on Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy (2004), a Torah commentary with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner; The Wicked Son (2006), a study of Jewish self-hatred and antisemitism; Bambi vs. Godzilla, a commentary on the movie business; THE SECRET KNOWLEDGE: ON THE DISMANTLING OF AMERICAN CULTURE (2011), a commentary on cultural and political issues; and Three War Stories (2013), a trio of novellas about the physical and psychological effects of war.

(WIKI)

QUOTE ONE

One might say that the politician, the doctor, and the dramatist make their living from human misery; the doctor in attempting to alleviate it, the politician to capitalize on it, and the dramatist, to describe it.

But perhaps that is too epigrammatic.

When I was young, there was a period in American drama in which the writers strove to free themselves of the question of character.

Protagonists of their worthy plays had made no choices, but were afflicted by a condition not of their making; and this condition, homosexuality, illness, being a woman, etc., was the center of the play. As these protagonists had made no choices, they were in a state of innocence. They had not acted, so they could not have sinned.

A play is basically an exercise in the raising, lowering, and altering of expectations (such known, collectively, as the Plot); but these plays dealt not with expectations (how could they, for the state of the protagonist was not going to change?) but with sympathy.

What these audiences were witnessing was not a drama, but a troublesome human condition displayed as an attraction. This was, formerly, known as a freak show.

The subjects of these dramas were bearing burdens not of their choosing, as do we all. But misfortune, in life, we know, deserves forbearance on the part of the unafflicted. For though the display of courage in the face of adversity is worthy of all respect, the display of that respect by the unaffected is presumptuous and patronizing.

One does not gain merit from congratulating an afflicted person for his courage. One only gains entertainment.

Further, endorsement of the courage of the affliction play’s hero was not merely impertinent, but, more basically, spurious, as applause was vouchsafed not to a worthy stoic, but to an actor portraying him.

These plays were an (unfortunate) by-product of the contemporary love-of-the-victim. For a victim, as above, is pure, and cannot have sinned; and one, by endorsing him, may perhaps gain, by magic, part of his incontrovertible status.

David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture (New York, NY: Sentinel Publishing, 2011), 134-135.

This next quote deals with “saint-hood”… but notes that people support it at others cost. When it happens to them, it isn’t fair.

QUOTE TWO

There is a Liberal sentiment that it should also punish those who take more than their “fair share.” But what is their fair share? (Shakespeare suggests that each should be treated not according to his deserts, but according to God’s mercy, or none of us would escape whipping.)

The concept of Fairness, for all its attractiveness to sentiment, is a dangerous one (cf. quota hiring and enrollment, and talk of “reparations”). Deviations from the Law, which is to say the Constitution, to accommodate specifically alleged identity-group injustices will all inevitably be expanded, universalized, and exploited until there remains no law, but only constant petition of Government.

We cannot live in peace without Law. And though law cannot be perfect, it may be just if it is written in ignorance of the identity of the claimants and applied equally to all. Then it is a possession not only of the claimants but of the society, which may now base its actions upon a reasonable assumption of the law’s treatment.

But “fairness” is not only a nonlegal but an antilegal process, for it deals not with universally applicable principles and strictures, but with specific cases, responding to the perceived or proclaimed needs of individual claimants, and their desire for extralegal preference. And it could be said to substitute fairness (a determination which must always be subjective) for justice (the application of the legislated will of the electorate), is to enshrine greed—the greed, in this case, not for wealth, but for preference. The socialistic spirit of the Left indicts ambition and the pursuit of wealth as Greed, and appeals, supposedly on behalf of “the people,” to the State for “fairness.”….

….But such fairness can only be the non-Constitutional intervention of the State in the legal, Constitutional process—awarding, as it sees fit, money (reparations), preferment (affirmative action), or entertainment (confiscation)….

….“Don’t you care?” is the admonition implicit in the very visage of the Liberals of my acquaintance on their understanding that I have embraced Conservatism. But the Talmud understood of old that good intentions can lead to evil—vide Busing, Urban Renewal, Affirmative Action, Welfare, et cetera, to name the more immediately apparent, and not to mention the, literally, tens of thousands of Federal and State statutes limiting freedom of trade, which is to say, of the right of the individual to make a living, and, so earn that wealth which would, in its necessary expenditure, allow him to provide a living to others….

….I recognized that though, as a lifelong Liberal, I endorsed and paid lip service to “social justice,” which is to say, to equality of result, I actually based the important decisions of my life—those in which I was personally going to be affected by the outcome—upon the principle of equality of opportunity; and, further, that so did everyone I knew. Many, I saw, were prepared to pay more taxes, as a form of Charity, which is to say, to hand off to the Government the choice of programs and recipients of their hard-earned money, but no one was prepared to be on the short end of the failed Government pro-grams, however well-intentioned. (For example—one might endorse a program giving to minorities preference in award of government contracts; but, as a business owner, one would fight to get the best possible job under the best possible terms regardless of such a program, and would, in fact, work by all legal and, perhaps by semi- or illegal means to subvert any program that enforced upon the pro-prietor a bad business decision.)*

Further, one, in paying the government to relieve him of a feeling of social responsibility, might not be bothered to question what in fact constituted a minority, and whether, in fact, such minority contracts were actually benefiting the minority so enshrined, or were being subverted to shell corporations and straw men. ^†

* No one would say of a firefighter, hired under rules reducing the height requirement, and thus unable to carry one’s child to safety, “Nonetheless, I am glad I voted for that ‘more fair’ law.”

† As, indeed, they are, or, in the best case, to those among the applicants claiming eligibility most capable of framing, supporting, or bribing their claims to the front of the line. All claims cannot be met. The politicians and bureaucrats discriminating between claims will necessarily favor those redounding to their individual or party benefit—so the eternal problem of “Fairness,” supposedly solved by Government distribution of funds, becomes, yet again and inevitably, a question of graft.

David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture (New York, NY: Sentinel Publishing, 2011), 116-117, 122, 151, 154.

THE BLAZE posts on this excellent response to a question at a Heritage Foundation seminar. MOONBATTERY says this of Dr. Cretella: “Dr. Cretella is President of the American College of Pediatricians. No doubt social engineers are out for her head.”

Wild Oats XI has won a ninth Big Boat challenge as one of her supermaxi rivals narrowly avoided a collision in Sydney Harbour.

Scallywag came perilously close to hitting a NSW Maritime vessel and Sydney ferry at the start.

Asked how he avoided a collision, Scallywag skipper David Witt said “we spun the roulette wheel and come up with zero, we were very very lucky.

“You’d expect a boat with maritime written on the side of it would actually get out of the way.”…

(Wide World of Sports)

Religio-Political Talk (RPT)

"I never discuss anything except politics and religion. There is nothing else to discuss." ~ G.K. Chesterton

The 1980 “Miracle On Ice”

The Destruction of Women’s Sports No Big Deal… To the Left

Impressive Pinpoint Sailing ~ WOW!

Islamo-Nazism Killing Soccer Fans In the Name of Allah