For some reason, YouTube still has no clean, complete video of the infamous “breaking” performance that embarrassed the Paris Olympic games. (TikTok has one of the better ones, but I can’t embed TikTok.)
EA columnist Curmie flagged this ludicrousness for me [his analysis is here], knowing that my sock drawer problems precluded me from watching any of the goings on in Gay Paree. I didn’t know what to write about Gunn, having already expressed my belief that the dancing component of the Olympics was a breach of integrity and a betrayal of the mission of the Games. I didn’t specifically delve into the addition this time of “breaking,” aka breakdancing, which appears to me to be one more example of woke virtue-signaling in The Great Stupid, a kind of Olympics event reparations for blacks. (Why not clog dancing? Square-dancing? Russian squat-dancing? Tap-dancing? I hear that ballroom dancing may not be far off…)
Was “RayGun” just incompetent (an ethics breach), deliberately disrespectful (an ethics breach if she was making fun of the event), or something else? Her breaking was broken, and she received no points from the judges at all, making it technically the worst Olympics performance since Plato was in the crowd. Additional evidence is dripping in, however, and it looks like this debacle was even more unethical than it initially appeared.
Dr. Gunn, far from being a critic of breakdancing who would want to make it look silly, is a “scholar” in the field, whatever that means in her native country of Australia which only recently had anyone breakdancing. It appears that she set up her own governing body for the “sport,” since there wasn’t one. It also appears that she installed her husband as the Olympic Australian breaking team coach.
It is alleged that Gunn manipulated the selection process to her own advantage, using various means to block superior breakers, as in “just about everybody.” One major impediment was her policy that competitors would have to foot the bill for travel to the qualifying rounds. So she won her own qualifying competitions, in which, again reportedly, her husband was on the judges panel.
It’s not quite like Dick Cheney chairing George Bush’s Vice-President search committee and selecting himself, but it’s close. Cheney was a better Veep than Gunn is a breakdancer, but heck, Cheney might be a better breakdancer than Gunn too.
The full extent of Gunn’s machinations have not been conclusively proven, but if she made her way to the Olympics at all with no talent for her own “sport” whatsoever, it seems clear that something blocked more qualified competitors. I would have preferred to write about Gunn after all the evidence was in, but it seems prudent to post Paris Olympics commentary before it is just murky memories.
It has been suggested that all of this was simply in service of Dr. Gunn’s desire to have an all-expenses-paid Paris vacation with her husband, so she could turn the new Olympics event into a travesty for her own gain, plus get international publicity for being a preening, shameless asshole.
My sociopath and narcissist alarms are pinging.
Ethics Alarms 
“It has been suggested that all of this was simply in service of Dr. Gunn’s desire to have an all-expenses-paid Paris vacation with her husband”
Jack,
Does she receive any points for a successful grift?
“Does she receive any points for a successful grift?”
Heh!
PWS
This is a minor ethics trainwreck.
Stage 1. Her performance was so outrageously bad that people immediately began wondering how she was selected. The videos of the finalists were available. The second place finisher was not good, but her dancing was instantly recognizable as breakdancing.
Stage 2. The influence of her husband and her friends on the committee was revealed. This was immediately refuted by the ‘reliable sources’ in the media and people bringing it up were charged with hatred and misinformation.
Stage 3. The influence was confirmed and an investigation into the olympic selection committee is underway.
Raygun has a Ph.D. in some humanities field that hasn’t existed for more than 10 years.
While I agree with the gist of this story, the “no points” thing is a bit misleading.
You’d expect they’d get points based on the overall presentation. But they don’t, apparently. It’s not like figure skating- it’s more like basketball. Getting no points just means she didn’t beat anybody.
It’s very misleading- and the media (as you’d expect) really has done nothing to clarify this issue.
But her parents were complaining that she should have gotten some points for ‘musicality’ and ‘choreography(?)’, so either her parents don’t understand the points system either (which I am willing to concede is completely possible) or there are points given for different aspects.
(Yes, her parents took to the media to complain about how their Ph.D.-holding daughter was mistreated by the judges and meanies on the internet).
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/olympics/article-13748689/Did-Raygun-actually-score-zero-points-Olympics-TRUTH-extraordinary-Olympic-judging-claim-revealed.htmlHonestly, just the way this competition is scored could be an ethics lesson all in itself. Or a Monty Python skit. Or both.
Was this developed by the Department of Education?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/olympics/article-13748689/Did-Raygun-actually-score-zero-points-Olympics-TRUTH-extraordinary-Olympic-judging-claim-revealed.html
Honestly, the way this thing is scored could be an ethics lesson in and of itself.
Or a Monty Python skit.
But, bottom line, each point is vis-a-vis another competitor.
It’s probably best analogized to a basketball team getting trounced 100-0.
[But that’s still better than thinking it’s scored like figure skating is scored- which you would- because this is more analogous to figure skating].
The fact that this is in the olympics makes me feel justified in ignoring the olympics since 1996. [At which point I was 9 and couldn’t be expected to know any better.]
To be fair, as they say in Letterkenny, I’ve never understood how “Ice Dancing” came to be an Olympic Competition, either. And speaking of Letterkenny, maybe she was inspired by their Canadian break-dancing goth drug dealers:
<a href="http://<iframe width="658" height="370" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dbjzSggm4Y8" title="Dance it out with the Skids of Letterkenny!" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen>http://<iframe width=”658″ height=”370″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/dbjzSggm4Y8″ title=”Dance it out with the Skids of Letterkenny!” frameborder=”0″ allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share” referrerpolicy=”strict-origin-when-cross-origin” allowfullscreen></iframe>
Well, I just posted but it didn’t show up; maybe it’s on hold because of the failed embed (WTH is wrong with WordPress now, anyway?).
https://youtu.be/dbjzSggm4Y8
It was in “pending” which is a step up from SPAM. Sorry: I’ve been away from the blog.
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Our piano technician’s former boyfriend is a competitive ballroom dancer and instructor. I’d say competitive ballroom dancing would make a more apt Olympic event than break dancing. Competitive ballroom dancing is pretty darned athletic and physically demanding. And there’s a clear organizational structure to it.
But personally, I’d be satisfied if the Olympics went back to just a marathon and the Decathalon. It could be over a weekend. In Greece!