Could the 2024 Paris Olympic Games have been any weirder?
First, the opening ceremonies, long known for artistry and pageantry, shocked the world with what many saw as a grotesque mockery of the famous Da Vinci painting The Last Supper, which depicted Jesus’ final meal with his 12 apostles before his crucifixion. The Olympics hired a rogues’ gallery of what appeared to be overgrown “theater kids” who cavorted in sexualized ways in bizarre makeup and scanty clothing.
Then the world watched as a male boxer from Algeria, Imane Khelif, punched his female opponent Angela Carini so hard she burst into tears and forfeited the match 46 seconds in. What, you say? That’s right. Despite indignant and angry accusations of “transphobia” from the Olympics and many on the left, Imane Khelif has XY chromosomes, confirming that he is a male despite being allowed to compete in women’s boxing.
Now comes Australian breakdancer Rachael “Raygun” Gunn, who stunned the world with a display of, well, it was not athletic virtuosity. The 36-year-old performed a breakdancing routine that struck most viewers as an amateurish, unskilled bit of writhing. Indeed, anyone who was alive during the 1980s can easily recall young children with more skilled moves than what Raygun displayed in Paris.
Now angry fans are launching an online petition accusing the competitor and her husband of rigging the process by which finalists are selected for Olympic competition. They accuse her of creating her own fake “governing body” for the breakdancing sport in her native Australia. The accusers say Gunn won her own qualifying contest that she set up herself with her husband’s help, and that his presence as the coach for the Olympics’ breakdancing team was a conflict of interest.
But it’s next to impossible to figure out what’s true and what’s fiction. Many media outlets are claiming the accusations against Gunn are not true, but they are basing it on reports from media outlets known to have a pronounced leftwing bias, such as Vox. Such outlets frequently defend what most people find indefensible if the conduct is performed by a member of a favored “oppressed minority.”
Newsweek is one outlet that relied on Vox’s reporting, and has made up its mind that Gunn did nothing wrong, signing off its article by asking rhetorically if Gunn “manipulated her way” into the games? Its answer? “Absolutely not.”
