PITTSBURGH (TNS) — There are GOATS like Tom Brady and GOATS like Simone Biles. Many people from New York City west, not least Pittsburghers, will argue that Brady wasn’t the greatest of all time. Everyone agrees that Biles is, with the possibility that no one will ever be greater.
But sadly, even an astonishingly accomplished athlete, who worked incredibly hard for many years to become so good at what she does — even Simone Biles can’t escape being a culture war target, and for what a sane person will think one of her greatest moments. A moment that led to her triumph in these Olympics and may have saved lives.
As various controversies at the Olympics have shown, we’ll apparently never escape culture-warring. Why? Because there’s something wrong with culture warriors.
You will remember that three years ago Biles made a mistake on a vault and realized she had lost something mental that she needed to have to do the difficult and dangerous routines she did. A gymnast told me it’s called the “prioceptive” sense, knowing exactly where you are in the air and what your body is doing.
A gymnast loses that, she could literally break her neck. Biles wisely, and bravely, dropped out of the competition and took time off.
Most of the world cheered her, but a small but significant number took it as an occasion to Make A Point About The Horrible Modern World. For example Matt Walsh, a daily podcaster for the Daily Wire, author of books about the decline and doom of America and maker of films making the same claims. He has a plum spot on one of the major right-wing media sites and millions follow him. He’s not a nobody.
He went wrong from his first words: “If there ever was a ‘sign of the times’ moment, it would be the response of the US Olympic Committee CEO Sarah Hirshland to Simone Biles abandoning her team & country.”
Biles isn’t injured, he said. Everyone else feels the stress. Go out there for your country and your teammates. You’re not showing “the Olympic spirit.” Other people perform injured. You should have thought of this before you got to Tokyo. And at the end, the appeal to old-fashioned virtues: “You made a commitment. Now we expect you to honor that commitment, with legal ramifications if you do not.”
Yes, the writer wanted to sue the damsel in distress, to use language I think he’d approve. My father had the old-fashioned sense of chivalry Walsh (claims to) have, and if I’d written that, he’d have buried my body in the back yard.
When I read Walsh and his fellows — who range all the way across the political spectrum — I slightly envy the ease with which they write, because they always know instantly what they think about the subject, whatever it is. They begin with the basic binary: My side or the other side? That gives them the answer: Right and good or wrong and evil.
They never lack for subjects either, because every event, no matter how personal and how complicated, must be evidence that the world is going to hell and the other guys are taking it there. Writers like him are always in search of targets (aka victims), the way sharks never stop swimming looking for the next meal.
They can’t help themselves. It’s apparently an addiction, though a very profitable one.
How does one avoid being a Matt Walsh? First, obviously, by not getting a job that requires you to be a [word the newspaper won’t let me use] 24/7. Second, to invoke my father again, by putting yourself in the other person’s shoes, and training yourself to do it automatically.
Before someone makes a snarky remark, I know this because I know how easy it is to be a Matt Walsh. I’ve worn the same shoes and wish I hadn’t.
The non-elite athletes — us schlubs — can’t know what the elite go through. But we can feel something of the same thing, enough to encourage sympathy. We can do it by analogy, by finding something in our lives somewhat like what the other person experiences.
We’ve all experienced a time when we couldn’t do what we needed to do, when we lost something, when things just went wrong. Very often the answer is to step back, to wait, to refresh and regenerate. Trying to push through it won’t help. If you’ve broken a leg, you can’t win the 100 meter dash until the bones heal.
You’ve hit the wall yourself. You should sympathize with someone of greater gifts and commitment who’s hit the wall. You’ve been there.
And that sometimes disappoints others. But you can only do what you can do. If you want to please them in the future (like win gold medals at the 2024 Olympics), you have to disappoint them now.
For those oppressed by their own Matt Walshes, here’s G.K. Chesterton’s response when a wealthy, pompous English bishop — kind of a Matt Walsh of his day — put down St. Francis of Assisi — who was a GOAT in his own way — for living so simply among the poor and as a result having fleas:
“If Brother Francis pardoned Brother Flea, / There still seems need of such strange charity, / Seeing he is, for all his gay goodwill, / Bitten by funny little creatures still.”
(David Mills is the deputy editorial page editor and a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.)
