Just when you think you've seen it all...
...well, you haven't, Pal. Not even close.
Life has a never-ending stream of new and ingenious abominations, just waiting for you to think – incorrectly – that you've seen it all.
Thought of that Thursday when the big news from the Olympics in Paris was that an Algerian man had beaten the daylights out of an Italian woman in the women's boxing competition. After just 46 seconds she gave up in tears, saying she'd never been hit so hard.
Men boxing women? Never thought I'd see that. See?
Some were led to conclude, “Well, Dearie, what did you expect? He's a GUY!”
Nevertheless, there was sympathy for the loser, because it takes a lot of work to qualify for the Olympics, and to surrender after less than a minute is tragic.
But that's the price being paid by women athletes, due to runaway political correctness, denial of obvious differences between the sexes, and an Olympic Committee that allows men to compete with women, demonstrating that it doesn't know (excuse this technical term) its ass from a hole in the ground.
The craziness has even extended into the world of anthropology, where the We're All The Same nuts now say you can't tell whether a skeleton is that of a man or a woman, just by looking at it. That gets a laugh from folks who studied anthropology back before we all went nuts. I'm married to someone with a master's degree in anthropology, and she says she would not be able to tell what sex the skeleton THOUGHT he or she was, but she can sure as hell tell what sex the skeleton WAS.
We live in a world where, almost without exception, the doctor delivering a baby can clearly see whether the proud parents have a son or a daughter. Case closed. (I once read of a family that had multiple sons, and when they finally had a daughter, the doctor announced, “Congratulations! You finally got one with indoor plumbing!”)
But something as simple boy/girl is way too easy for the political correctness nuts and woke scolds among us. They're so ardent that they will sacrifice all of women's sports to make their specious argument that we're somehow all the same. (Except, of course, in the case of Diversity Equity and Inclusion, which complicates everything.)
I was a swimmer in high school. The workouts were some of the hardest work I've ever done, swimming as much as five miles in an afternoon practice. I swam distance, 200 and 400 yard events. (I once swam against a guy named John Kinsella, who went on to win a silver medal in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. By the time I finished the 400 yards, he was out of the pool and dry. I think even his hair was dry by the time I finished.)
Our coach was a no nonsense guy who played football for the University of Illinois during the Dick Butkus era.
Many times since Lia Thomas became a top competitor in women's swimming after a lackluster career as a male swimmer, I've imagined what that old swimming coach would have said if someone told him he wanted to go compete with the girl swimmers instead of the boys.
It would have taken a couple times saying it to register with Coach Merson. But once it sunk in, he would have hooted you out of the pool, and probably off the team. I can't imagine what he would have said about guys preferring to compete against girls. But it would have been LOUD.
Let's not forget, as this latest Olympic craziness plays out, that here in Wyoming it took two years, and two tries in the Wyoming Legislature, to get a law passed prohibiting boys from competing against girls in high school sports.
And it became law without the governor's signature, because he found Sen. Wendy Schuler's bill “Draconian.”
We all have our own definitions, but a guy beating on a woman for 46 seconds before she gives up in tears, in the name of Olympic-level sports, sounds pretty damn Draconian to me.
That's what I call the agony of defeat.
Good thing our lawmakers passed a bill, despite the governor's misgivings, to keep insanity like this from happening here.
Dave Simpson can be reached at DaveSimpson145@hotmail.com
