I haven’t gone back and checked all of the Ethics Alarms “Don’t Make Me Defend…” posts, but its hard to imagine one involving a public figure I admire less than Megan Rapinoe. Her only legitimate claim to significance is that she was a talented player in a game I wouldn’t abandon my sock drawer to watch, yet she has used that narrow platform to bray a series of woke knee-jerk pronouncements that showed her to be ignorant, anti-American, and the kind of militant feminist who gives feminism a bad name. That, added to an abrasive and narcissistic personality, has made her a blight on the sports landscape and others. And yet…
…fair is fair, and unfair is unfair. Conservatives detest Rapinoe, naturally, and today they pounced on an off-the-cuff comment she made exactly the way the progressive media has deliberately attacked every statement made by Donald Trump that could possibly be interpreted as dumb, mean, sinister or otherwise objectionable when the same words would be ignored from anyone else. I sometimes call this “The Perpetually Jaundiced Eye.” I hate it, and I hate it no matter who the victim is. Yes, even Megan Rapinoe.
During the National Women’s Soccer League Championship, in what had been announced the final match of her storied soccer career, Megan tore her Achilles tendon. This, coming off her humiliating botch of a crucial penalty kick in her team’s loss in the World Cup gave Rapinoe an exit that was approximately the exact opposite of Ted Williams’ (or Roy Hobbs’) home run in his last at bat.
In the post-match, post-injury, and post-career press conference, Rapinoe said, “I’m not a religious person or anything and if there was a god, like, this is proof that there isn’t. This is fucked up. It’s just fucked up. Six minutes in and I eat my Achilles!”
Well, the “knights of the keyboard” (as Ted called them, among less printable things), at least those unlikely to be Biden voters, were outraged. Conservative pundits called her “soulless” and a “true disgrace to this country,” “narcissistic.” One said she should “humble herself & repent.” Piers Morgan—talk about someone who should know all about narcissism–wrote an attack column called “Good riddance, Megan Rapinoe – you smug, pink-haired prima donna!”Fox News headlined that “Megan Rapinoe says championship injury ‘proof’ there isn’t a god.” In “Megan Rapinoe Closes Her Soccer Career by Being a Bad Role Model,” the National Review suggested that she is “spiritually barren.” On “X,” Collin Rugg, the co-owner of conservative commentary site Trending Politics wrote, “NEW: Woke soccer player Megan Rapinoe says there is no way God could possibly exist because she got hurt while playing soccer.” The conservative Washington Free Beacon even featured a guest post by “God Almighty” in which Jehovah gloated,
…When the U.S. women’s soccer team protested the National Anthem during the World Cup earlier this year, I made sure they were humiliated by Sweden, an inferior country. I engineered it so Rapinoe, playing in her final World Cup, would contribute to the loss by whiffing a penalty kick, one of the easiest shots ever invented in the history of sports…I genuinely thought that was the end of Rapinoe’s career, and I was ready to move on. But… I couldn’t resist the urge to rub it in by orchestrating a second final humiliation.
Sorry, Megan. What happened to you is proof I do exist.
Pssst! Morons! Megan was kidding. All of her comments after the game were facetious, and yet you seriously think that harmless bit was intended as profound theological commentary? Or, in the alternative, you don’t really think that, but you hate Rapinoe so you want to make as many gullible boobs as possible hate her too. Nice. You are hereby ethically estopped from ever complaining that fact-checkers deliberately take Trump as being literal when he’s riffing, trolling, or joking.
Her comment wasn’t even original as tongue-in-cheek lines go; in fact, it’s rather clichéd. Heck, I’ve used both versions, “There is a God,” and “There is no God.’ and more than once. Trust me, nothing short of Jesus coming out of the sky in a flaming chariot would convince me that there is a God, and I distinctly recalling saying, after Carl Yastrzemski popped up with the tying and winning runs in scoring position to end the 1978 play-off game between the Red Sox and Yankees, “There is no God!” (Roger Angell, the great baseball writer, later wrote, “I think God was shelling a peanut.”
Nobody wrote that he was “spiritually barren.
As I usually point out in these episodes, there are so many legitimate reasons to criticize toxic jerks like Rapinoe that there is no excuse for manufacturing outrage.
Conservatives just look petty and foolish when they behave like this, and they risk creating more Megan Rapinoes in the process.
Ethics Alarms 
“I’m not a religious person or anything and if there was a god, like, this is proof that there isn’t.”
What kind of sentence is this? The middle part doesn’t really match the second part. It seems like she was rambling.
Conservative pundits called her “soulless” and a “true disgrace to this country,” “narcissistic.”
I’m willing to bet these are all true, but not because of what is said here.
“When the U.S. women’s soccer team protested the National Anthem during the World Cup earlier this year, I made sure they were humiliated by Sweden, an inferior country. I engineered it so Rapinoe, playing in her final World Cup, would contribute to the loss by whiffing a penalty kick, one of the easiest shots ever invented in the history of sports…I genuinely thought that was the end of Rapinoe’s career, and I was ready to move on. But… I couldn’t resist the urge to rub it in by orchestrating a second final humiliation.”
I would say this was more offensive than anything Rapinoe says here. It’s borderline heretical. I never understood how Christians can act this way towards non-Christians. It’s not very Christian like. Really, an atheist saying there’s no God? Not at all surprising.
“Trust me, nothing short of Jesus coming out of the sky in a flaming chariot would convince me that there is a God”
Well if Revelation 1:7 is correct then allow me to quote Professor Hubert Farnsworth: “Good news everyone!”
Well, exactly. Seldom has a random, spontaneous, meaningless ad lib been attacked with such venom. (I mean hers, not mine.)
Thanks. I’m glad I’m not the only one whose issue with her comment wasn’t it’s content but it’s completely awful construction.
None of those articles, comments, or glaring headlines are serious. They are schadenfreude (sp?). It might be an unethical response but she earned it in spades.
In general, our culture tends to forgive silly outbursts like this, especially when the utterer is an athlete or entertainer who is respected or liked and gets hurt playing sport. You see it in athletes injured during a game – fans will clap when the injured player gets up or leaves the field.
The responses to Rapinoe tell us that she is loathed by so many. This isn’t clapping when she get up or leaves the field; it is saying, “good riddance, you horrible human being, and don’t come back.” Our culture does not like athletes – a privileged lot if there ever were one – using their supposed positions of influence or prominence to go around telling the world how awful we are. She is not perceived as the track and field athletes raising their fists on the medal podium in Mexico City, athletes protesting real grievances at a time of social unrest. I suspect the country’s response at the time was, “hey, don’t do to some one else’s house and air your dirty laundry!”
Rapinoe has displayed shocking contempt for the very society that has allowed her to play a sport at superstar levels, only to be stuck in the eyes with her hubris and fatuous blatherings. The ethical values are graciousness, respect, and consideration. She throws bombs on the breakfast table and expects us to clean up after her. “Good riddance, Meg. Don’t come back. We won’t miss you.”
jvb
“She is not perceived as the track and field athletes raising their fists on the medal podium in Mexico City, athletes protesting real grievances at a time of social unrest.”
Bravo Indigo November Golf Oscar!
The deeply viscid irony? Bolstered by a phalanx of obsequious enablers, she’s convinced she is.
PWS
I thought the editorial by God was hilarious because it was couched as having been written by a former government official from a prior administration. I’m surprised there wasn’t a plug for his forthcoming book, available soon on Amazon and bookstores everywhere, “The Bible.”
She’s a snarky jerk. Have some, sweetie.
To put it bluntly- who gives a fuck! I long ago stopped listening, caring, or even wondering about the likes of Jane Fonda, Kapernick, for that matter, any sports or entertainment individual with naive, baseless, uninformed opinions.
My sentiments exactly. Most of these people would disappear if we simply ignore them
I don’t think Rapinoe was thinking clearly post injury. Her Achilles injury proves that God is a compassionate God because He did not orchestrate a severe mouth injury.
Rapinoe’s big mouth, the team’s disrespect for the National Anthem, and getting smoked by 15yr old high schoolers has dinged their market value considerably. Stupid girls.
Just here to tip my hat to the phrases “The Perpetually Jaundiced Eye” and “knights of the keyboard.”
I will be adopting both.
Make sure Ted gets credit for “Knights of the Keyboard.” He unveiled that in his final public statement as a player, during his retirement ceremony at Fenway Park, in his final game in 1960.(The press was not amused.)
Everyone has the right to make a complete fool of themselves by their ignorant public statements and self-righteous utterances, but they are also entitled to bear the pushback from those they revile.
I don’t think Rapinoe lost any sleep over the criticism she received; her level of narcissism and hubris is seldom sensitive to others’ opinions.
Seriously, like most Christians I know, I pray for all those who reject God and his authority, that they will turn away from their pride and unbelief. But our culture is increasingly hostile to us and those like us, and embraces those who scoff at God and our faith -just as the Bible foretells. We must resist the urge to retaliate in kind to mere insult, but to figuratively “turn the other cheek,” and as Paul admonished, to “not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
Yet, when the threats become existential, I am inclined to revert to he instruction of “Let he who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one.” Good advice for our times, in my opinion.
This just in: insiders report that Rapinoe is disappointed that her injury will interfere with joining a planned march and carrying a sign that reads – Lesbians for Hamas!
You cannot make this stuff up.
Batman, with that you just poked a hole in my effort to be Zen/Christian compassionate to poor Megan. I mean she has made a fool of herself forever. It’s just, as the Rolling Stones wrote, “look at that stupid girl” (which plays in my head every time I see a reference to AOC). But support for murderous terrorists is way over the line for compassion, sorry.
I will disagree with Jack that penalty shots are the easiest shots in sports. Penalty shots require striking skill with enough force to get it past a goalie without misdirecting it left, right or over the bar. There’s also guesswork regarding which way the goalie will go to defend which is a probability problem. Plus there is the mental/psychological burden that if you miss it you can be a goat. (Hey, when did being a goat, meaning the cost of a loss, morph into the Greatest of All Time).
I’d go with a three-foot putt as a candidate for the easiest shot in sports.
And rereading Jack’s post, he says “one of the easiest” so, as Emily Litella would say…you know.