FOX News Executive Editor and VP John Moody published a hideous editorial complaining about the more diverse make-up of this year's U.S. Olympic team. Reacting to a recent article in the Washington Post which argued that despite the diversity the team is still “overwhelmingly white,” Moody asserted that Team USA could lose medals because it's too gay and too black.
Unless it's changed overnight, the motto of the Olympics, since 1894, has been “Faster, Higher, Stronger.” It appears the U.S. Olympic Committee would like to change that to “Darker, Gayer, Different.” If your goal is to win medals, that won't work.
A USOC official was quoted this week expressing pride (what else?) about taking the most diverse U.S. squad ever to the Winter Olympics. That was followed by a, frankly, embarrassing laundry list of how many African-Americans, Asians and openly gay athletes are on this year's U.S. team. No sport that we are aware of awards points – or medals – for skin color or sexual orientation.
For the current USOC, a dream team should look more like the general population. So, while uncomfortable, the question probably needs to be asked: were our Olympians selected because they're the best at what they do, or because they're the best publicity for our current obsession with having one each from Column A, B and C?
Though this is Team USA's most diverse delegation of athletes ever, as The Washington Post reported, the U.S. Olympic Committee still has a lot of progress to make: Out of 243 athletes, two men are openly gay, “10 are African American — 4 percent — and another 10 are Asian American. The rest, by and large, are white.” Moody suggested without basis that the focus on diversity may cost Team USA medals, and speculated that athletes were given spots on the team that they didn't earn during their trials, because of their race.
Concluded Moody: “If someone is denied a slot on a team because of prejudice, that's one thing. Complaining that every team isn't a rainbow of political correctness defeats the purpose of sports, which is competition. At the Olympic level, not everyone is a winner. Not everyone gets a little plastic trophy to take home. Sorry. ‘Faster, Higher, Stronger' still works better than ‘We win because we're different.'”
