Posted on 07/31/2021 5:00:44 AM PDT by Kaslin
Is there anyone who has not voiced an opinion on Simone Biles stepping aside from Olympic competition by now? I'll add to the deluge by saying: Thanks be to God she is where she is. She was once a child in foster care. Her grandparents decided to adopt her, and that made all the difference. May her presence in the news shine a light on all the children in foster care who aren't yet success stories because they do not have the gift of a family to help make all the difference in their lives.
Biles writes about that defining event in her life -- and her sister's -- in her book "Courage to Soar: A Body in Motion, A Life in Balance." She tells of the day her grandmother told her that she and her sister were adopted by her grandparents, and of the joy of being able to embrace them as Mom and Dad. She had a permanent home, a "forever family" to cheer her on, cry with her and give her advice and all the things that parents can do for a child, well into adulthood. It's not too much for a child to ask for.
And yet there are at least 437,500 children in foster care -- we're still awaiting an official assessment of how the pandemic has made this crisis worse.
As people were opining on Biles' decision to recognize her human limits, the House of Representatives was voting to end the Hyde Amendment, a line in the sand that for four decades has prevented taxpayer funding of abortion.
Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois, the bill's original sponsor and namesake, said that there is nothing guaranteed of the American experiment in freedom. We are reminded of that constantly these days. Violence and division are rife. Even the way commentators feel so free to attack Biles, a young woman who made a decision to protect herself and her team. It is good to be aware of our own weaknesses -- individually, as part of a team, and as a country.
Hyde said in 1987: "[I]f the boundaries of our public hospitality are one index of our public virtue and our character, then the abortion liberty -- this terrible shredding of the fabric of our hospitality, this deliberate fracturing of the community of the commonly protected -- must be reversed if America is to endure and prosper."
Hyde argued that abortion is "deeply unworthy of us" and "demeaning." And he said that at a time when at least we were not spending government money on abortion.
In her book, Biles reflects on her life's journey to gymnastics and how it would have been different if her birth mother could have raised her. "[W]hen it comes to how things turned out, I'm not sorry. I'm part of a beautiful family that is closer and more loving than any I could've ever chosen. As the woman told my grandma -- now my mom -- in the lunch break room all those years ago, God never makes a mistake."
We do make mistakes, though. And this moment when Simone Biles is in the news and the "people's house" rejects the Hyde Amendment -- which has for so long has been a bulwark -- should set off alarms that we have abandoned a founding principle. In that same 1987 speech, Hyde said: "In a sense, every American is a Founder; every American is a framer ... And we need foresight and wisdom and compassion and a reclamation of the tradition of hospitality."
Is America a country of hospitality or cruelty? Is it a country that helps women and promotes life or a country that throws both away? The House of Representatives has voted to put our money toward the latter. The most important takeaway from Biles being in the news is what a tremendous gift her life is, whatever choices she made in Tokyo.
Obviously wrote it last month expecting a gold medal.
Well the biggest problem is the media has spent the last 18 months selling this Olympics as the Simone Biles show. Cause the media are idiots and don’t know how to sell the largest sporting event on the planet except by highlighting a couple of people. Then she gets herself a bad case of the yips, decides she’d rather not bust her neck, and steps away. Meanwhile the media has been prepared to talk about her almost exclusively for 2 weeks. So what do they do? Keep talking about her, cause they didn’t bother to do any legwork and have anything prepped to say about the other couple thousand athletes there. I mean they didn’t even have anything prepped for Sunisa Lee even though she’s got a pretty awesome story.
The media have never comprehended how to cover the Olympics. And never will.
My favorite All-Time Olympian is Shun Fujimoto.
He nailed his landing, despite a broken leg to help Japan win the Gold Medal in the Team competition.
If anyone should have lit the Olympic Flame in Tokyo, it should have been him. Instead, it was some gaijin, who hadn’t even lived in Japan since she was 3, and barely speaks the language.
Well put.
Simone Biles is the role model young girls/women need today; she has done her self, her country, and the gymnastic industry proud over the years. Unlike that pink-haired soccer player who won't even stand for her country, a traitor to her Nation.
I’ll leave her alone when she stops calling herself the GOAT. When the media and other morons stop lauding her as some sort of “hero”. She quit. Whatever her reasons, she quit. That’s no hero, and that’s no GOAT.
The “White Knight Beta Cucks and Soy Bois” are out...
LOL, nice turn opf phrase, especially for an old man like me. Hall monitor?Lol
LOL. . .good one.
Hah. . .really? Where was the wreckage? The link to the paper article?
What about the lost crew, their bodies, their families and death notifications, and pictures of the wreckage, and the guys taking people to see what they had done (bragging about it, after all), and the helo inventory being down a helo, and those guys lived to brag about it and. . .so on. . .
But other than that, totally believable.
Concur.
That's charitable of you since my comment addressed the mental aspect of sports only. A lapse of confidence will destroy you, the yips in golf and baseball (both mentally induced) will also destroy you......as it will in any other muscle memory sport.
Photograph on tv local news. Brief story.... done... like it never happened. Like I said... erased.
Like I said— made up
“That being said, if she comes out and calls me a Racist because I’m a White Male and I support POTUS Trump, she can go F**k herself. Until then she gets the benefit of the doubt.”
She supports BLM so she just might
“That being said, if she comes out and calls me a Racist because I’m a White Male and I support POTUS Trump, she can go F**k herself. Until then she gets the benefit of the doubt.”
She supports BLM so she just might
“In a slap to the face of all those who came before and performed, some poorly, some not so, few quit but strived to forge on..”
I never thought of that. I’ve been following gymnastics and skating for decades, and don’t remember any other top contender quitting for mental health reasons.
How about Kerri Strugg, that did a vault with 2 severed ligaments in her ankle?
Saw a piece on Strugg recently, she healed up just fine.. That was pre-’Twisties’ days I reckun.
I hope Simon gets the help or relief she needs.
IF she saves one disoriented gymnast from crunching their skull, I guess that’s a silver lining.
We agree on something!
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