I believe that if you’re going to represent the United States, then you should, at the very least, show some respect for our country.
Last week, Gwen Berry, a hammer thrower, turned away from the flag during the playing of our national anthem at the U.S. track and field Olympic trials. As the anthem played, she draped her tee-shirt, emblazoned with the words “Activist Athlete” over her head. That move has gotten her a lot of attention.
Pro Tip: It’s not even a hammer. It’s a ball on the end of a string. But I guess “ball on a string spinney toss” doesn’t sound as cool as “hammer throw”.
First of all, I’m going to admit that I have no idea what she was supposedly protesting about or for. Nor do I care. If she’s going to represent her fellow Americans, then she should act like one. Period.
Though maybe she already is. Her “my opinion matters” attitude is exactly what we saw for more than a year as people who think that I give a damn about what they think burned down cities. For all we know, she could have been one of those chicken-shit ANTIFA people all decked out in riot gear and balaclavas. It’s possible her display of disrespect was just more of what she’s been doing all along.
It’s also possible that she didn’t realize where she was supposed to look. After all, it doesn’t take a lot of brainpower to compete in the hammer throw. All you have to know is which direction you should be facing when you let go of your ball on a string. And even that allows a fairly large margin of error.
So, maybe she was just too stupid to recognize our national anthem and too dumb to know what our flag looks like. It’s as good of a guess as any.
Although…the other two Americans on the podium knew exactly where to look and how to stand respectfully with their hands over their hearts. So, it doesn’t seem fair to besmirch the good name of all hammer throwers when it’s only Gwen Berry who appears to be dumber than the hammer she’s throwing.
This isn’t the first time that Gwen has used the spotlight to disrespect our country. In 2019 she took first place at the Pan American Games. She got a ton of attention by raising a fist at the end of the Star-Spangled Banner to protest against “racial injustice” in America.
Ah. Now it all makes sense. It’s a racial thing. The first and second place finishers were both white. Gwen Berry came in third. And she’s black. If she was one of the protestors demanding that we “defund the police” because of racial injustice, maybe this is an extension of that. Maybe she was protesting that the laws of physics are stacked against people of color.
Because her third-place finish couldn’t possibly be because the other two women were simply better than she was on that day. The system must have been rigged against her.
Maybe she believes that the first and second place finishers have some sort of “white privilege” and gravity doesn’t seem to affect their hammers the same way it does a black person’s.
After all, Isaac Newton was white, and he lived during a time when tens of thousands of soon-to-be-slaves were shipped to the United States. So, I can see how the Liberal use of BLM logic could make her conclude that Newtonian physics is just another tool used by whitey to keep the “coloreds” (What? It’s just an old-timey way of saying “people of color”.) in their place.
Or maybe her antics don’t have anything to do with protesting anything. Maybe she just likes attention.
