Another day, another old quote showing how consistently wrong JD Vance is.
This time the comments that resurfaced are about Simone Biles, on the occasion of her winning the gold medal in the Women’s All-Around Gymnastics competition at the Paris 2024 Olympics.
Speaking on Fox News in 2021, while he was still a Senate hopeful, long before he was potentially our next Vice President, he decided to use Simone’s decision to drop out of the Tokyo Olympics as an opportunity to attack the growing acceptance of self-care as “weak.” He said:
“I think, obviously, it’s understandable that she was going through an incredible amount of pressure. What I find so weird about this, and it reflects on the media more than it does on Simone Biles, is that we’ve tried to turn a very tragic moment — Simone Biles quitting the Olympic team — into this act of heroism. And I think it reflects pretty poorly on our sort of therapeutic society that we try to praise people not for moments of strength, not for moments of heroism, but for their weakest moments.”
He continued:
“Being an athlete at that level is incredibly tough… a normal response in this moment would be to say: ‘It’s just a shame that she’s going through this. It’s a shame that she quit.’ But instead, what our press has done, I think, is turn this into this weird therapeutic moment. ‘Let’s praise her for doing this.’ And I think that’s really where the problem herein lies.”
Wow. Man, it must be so easy to judge a world-class athlete from the comfort of your couch, huh? OK, JD. Here’s the deal…
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Stepping away from those games may have been a sign of physical weakness, obviously, but the decision was pretty clearly an example of extraordinary strength of character and good judgment. This was when Simone had “the twisties.” It’s what gymnasts call it when they suddenly can’t tell which direction they’re pointed while they’re spinning around in the air. In other words, the way all us mortal folks would be if we were suddenly thrown into a backflip. If Simone had forced herself to go forward even when she knew it was in dangerous circumstances, that would have been weak — and foolish.
So yes, the press and society at large praised her. What she was doing was setting a great example for young people, for whom the answer is NOT always do it, do it, do it, no matter how you’re feeling about it.
And her reward was NOT being horribly injured. Instead she took the time and care to fix what she needed to and came back stronger than ever. And she won the gold. If you still think she was weak or wrong in that moment, we’d recommend shutting the hell up about it. Because it’s clear Simone Biles is the expert on what Simone Biles needed. And she has the medals to prove it.
[Image via MEGA/WENN.]
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