Last week, journalists at the Olympics repeatedly asked American athletes to denounce America—and sadly, some took the bait.
“It brings up mixed emotions to represent the U.S. right now. It’s a little hard. There’s obviously a lot going on that I’m not the biggest fan of,” said skier Hunter Hess. “Just because I’m wearing the flag doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the U.S.”
Can you even imagine choosing to denounce your people on the world stage, choosing to be divisive instead of unifying the country around your skill and success? And over what? America isn’t Apartheid South Africa or Communist China—it’s a country enforcing our immigration laws!
Yet even though I think they are entitled jerks for denouncing the country whose flag they are competing under in front of our adversaries, I would never take their right to do so away from them.
Ironically, it is because they are Americans that they can criticize this country—because of the freedom of speech we have.
Not so Eileen Gu, the women’s champion favored to win women’s freestyle skiing big air. Gu infamously chose to compete for our greatest adversary, China, and may have even given up her American citizenship as China does not allow dual citizenship (Gu has refused to confirm one way or the other). Unlike *our athletes, Gu is not allowed to criticize the country she now represents. In exchange for millions of dollars, Gu gave up her free speech rights to run cover for a country that jails dissenters, kills protestors, and is committing a genocide of Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang region.
Just this week, China sentenced Jimmy Lai, A democracy activist, businessman and staunch critic of Beijing, to 20 years in prison for the crime of conspiracy to publish seditious materials.
Where is the media demanding to know how Eileen Gu feels about that?
Not that she would answer.
