2022 Olympics

The Russian Figure Skating Olympics Scandal Finally Is Resolved After Everyone Stopped Paying Attention.

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I’m thinking about establishing an organizational version of The Julie Principle. When an entity, company, organization or government has shown that its culture is sufficiently corrupt and unlikely to change for the better, maybe it’s a waste of time and ethical analysis to keep complaining about the inevitable misconduct. “Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly.” Either just give up on trusting that entity, company, organization or government, or resolve to live with its flaws. Like Hollywood. The National Football League. Or, as in this ridiculous episode, the Olympics and Russia.

Kamila Valieva, the teenage Russian figure skating star, was banned from competition for four years yesterday by a three-member arbitration panel at the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport. The reason was her positive doping test that messed up the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics beyond all reason, confusing everyone and keeping more than a dozen other athletes from receiving their medals.

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The Women’s Free Skate Disaster Everybody Needed To See

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Now let’s see if any lessons were learned. I’m dubious.

As even those, like me, who have the integrity combined with a low nausea threshold that prevented me from watching China’s version of the 1936 Munich Olympics, now know about Olympics darling doper Kamila Valieva choking spectacularly in the Women’s Free Skate long program and falling out of the medal race. One has to feel sympathy for the girl, who was subjected to unimaginable pressures because of a tangle of terrible, stupid, unethical decisions made by the adults around her. Beyond that, the result was perfect, exposing so much of what is corrupt and intolerable about so many things: the Olympics generally, these Olympics, women’s skating, women’s sports, Russia, and more.

We begin with the fact that Valieva should never have been allowed to skate in the individual event after testing positive for a banned substance before the Games. The reasoning of the Olympics powers that holding her to the same standards that adults would be held to in the same events she competes with them is subjecting her to “harm” is unethical, the ultimate “Think of the children!’ rationalization. Gee, you idiots, how did that harm avoidance plan work out for her? In what universe would the 15-year-old skater be more harmed by being doped out of the Olympics as any adult skater would be, than by having to compete with a major scandal hanging over her head, and collapsing under the pressure? Sure, what happened was moral luck, but the best case scenario would have also been terrible: the girl stuns the world with a brilliant program, and every medal remains in limbo for months.

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The Russian Figure Skater And The Beijing Olympics’ Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Ethics Call

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

I suppose it should not be a surprise that these most unethical of all Olympiads (since the Olympics should never have been held in this totalitarian, ethics-free nation to begin with) would feature the most unethical decision imaginable. If I cared one whit about the disgusting charade in China and who wins what, I might really be upset. As it is, I’m just going to point out, dispassionate, the ethics rot on display.

Fifteen-year-old Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva  tested positive for trimetazidine, a banned substance that improves athletic performance, in the  urine sample that Valieva submitted at the Russian national championship on Christmas. The drug, known as TMZ, is a heart medication that can increase endurance. But the result was not confirmed and relayed to Russian officials or to her for more than six weeks. Russia’s antidoping agency said it learned of the failed test on February 7. On that day, the teen led the Russians to a gold medal in the team event.

Let’s stop right there. She tested positive for a banned substance, and that should have stopped her from competing in the Olympics. It doesn’t matter why the test results were delayed (the Russians cheat, and have always cheated). It doesn’t matter whose fault it was. Valieva was ineligible, and whenever it was discovered that she was ineligible, the only fair and ethical response was to disqualify her. This also meant that her team would be disqualified, because a disqualified skater helped it win the team event.

Ethics can be hard, but this conclusion isn’t hard. It is obvious and irrefutable. Because she shouldn’t have been competing at all, and would not have been had either someone in Russia not cheated or was incredibly incompetent, the skater had no right to be skating, and any athlete or athlete who would have won had she not been illicitly permitted in the Games has been treated unfairly, robbed, cheated, pick your term.

That ought to have been the immediate decision. Instead, Olympic “arbitrators” (Arbitrators are supposed to have impeccable ethics alarms, and not the ethical instincts of Hillary Clinton. Who are these fools?) ruled that Valieva not only wouldn’t be disqualified but could continue competing, but that any medals in any event in which she places the top three will not be awarded. The question of who wins what medal, and whether Valieva wins any, will wait until after her doping case is definitively settled, which may take months. 

Ethics Dunces. Irredeemable cowards. Morons. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Turn-Coat Olympians

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Maybe that headline is a bit slanted for an ethics quiz. Anyway…

The story in many media sources was about the mean Chinese social media mob attacking Beverly Zhu, a 19-year-old figure skater who was born and raised in the United States but competes for China under the name Zhu Yi. In the same Times story, I learned about another U.S born and raised Olympian, Eileen Gu, a freeskier who also chose to represent in the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and won the gold in the women’s freestyle skiing big air event. (As I think I’ve hinted here, Olympic Games held to promote a brutal Communist regime which uses its wealth to corrupt American institutions and was responsible for infecting the world are well down my priority list, below eating slugs and watch Alec Baldwin movies.

However, once I was made aware of the two athletes, my reaction was “What the hell?” If it had any principles, our boot-licking government would have boycotted the ’22 Olympics for real, and not substituted a symbolic and toothless “diplomatic boycott.” If our athletes cared about opposing little things like genocide and slave labor, some of them would have stayed home, or at least defied Nancy Pelosi’s warning not to make Big Chinese Brother mad by, for example, telling the truth.

But Zhu and Gu are in a whole other category. They deliberately joined the Chinese team to defeat the United States of America, where they have been raised and have benefited from all of the freedom and quality of life advantages China does not provide to its citizens. Never mind criticizing the regime, these women are actively assisting it.

My verdict? That is unethical, disloyal, and despicable.

Change my mind, if you can.

Your Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Do you agree that the two athlete’s decision to compete for China and against the U.S. is unethical?

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Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 2/5/2022: Part I, A Special “I Sure Hope You’re Not Watching The Olympics” Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

In 1936, human rights activists unsuccessfully argued for the U.S. to boycott the Berlin Summer Olympics to protest the Nazis’ ongoing persecution of German Jews. However, foreshadowing the “Holocaust? What Holocaust?” stance that preceded the U.S. entry into World War II, FDR gave Adolf the propaganda bonanza he sought, and no, Jesse Owens couldn’t spoil it. Now the Biden Administration is similarly engaged in contrived ignorance regarding China, which is making Hitler’s Olympic Games look like Oktoberfest. All right, there’s a “diplomatic boycott,” but that’s meaningless since spectators are mostly banned anyway. This tweet is apt:

The main reason we are there, as many have pointed out, is to accommodate the giant broadcasting companies and corporate sponsors who view the Games as a money-making opportunity. It’s a dilemma: my refusal to watch a second of the Games prevents me from knowing who to boycott. But then no ethicist, or anyone who cares about ethics, should watch the Olympics wherever they are being held. We know they are corrupt; they no longer celebrate “amateurism,” and U.S. athletes continue to use them to insult their own country, which paid to let them compete.

Nancy Pelosi got the Games off to a rousingly unethical start—wait—can one behave unethically regarding Olympics in China? Isn’t this a case where Bizarro World ethics apply, which hold that in a Bizarro World culture, normal ethics often don’t work, and may be futile? It’s unethical to be ethical in a place like China! That seems to be the Speaker’s position.  the Pelosi said, “‘’”

“I would say to our athletes, ‘You are there to compete.’ Do not risk incurring the anger of the Chinese government, because they are ruthless. I know there is a temptation on the part of some to speak out while they are there. I respect that, but I also worry about what the Chinese government might do.”

If they are so ruthless, why is the United States participating in their Olympic Games? The U.S. Olympic Committee always muzzles, or tries, our athletes, but Pelosi is a high government official telling Americans to shut up because it may make a totalitarian government angry. If I were competing, Pelosi’s statement alone would be enough to make me speak up. We shall see if any of our athletes have the courage to speak up for real human rights abuses when they know the nation they are criticizing, unlike their own, might take serious action against them.

My guess: no.

In response, Joy Behar, the reigning moron on “The View,” stepped up in the absence of Whoopi and reached new idiotic heights, defending Pelosi with this:

“She’s being maternal I think. You know Nancy is momala. You know she’s always like ‘I think about the children. It’s for the children.’ She cares about the kids. That’s her.”

The New York Times clearly has its marching orders.  Right around the time the opening ceremonies were starting in Beijing, the Times published an article highlighting the upside of China’s totalitarian response to the pandemic—yes, it was even tougher than in Michigan. The strict lockdowns and other acts of state coercion  have been a major success, the article told readers. (Not like the wimpy, mildly Constitution abusing measures those conservatives are whining about!) China’s strategy, it says, shows what a society can do when it makes the prevention of “Covid” its “No. 1 priority.”

Really? And how would the Times know that? The Times knows dictatorship is successful with viruses because China says it has one of the lowest pandemic death rates in the entire world, though the story notes that the Chinese data “can be suspect.” Ya think??? Never mind: China has “almost certainly” done better than the democracies, even if the official numbers are “artificially low.” No kidding: China has reported 3 deaths per million from COVID, compared with almost 2,700 in the United States. Do you believe that? Does anyone? The Times doesn’t believe it, and still is publishing this bootlicking junk. Continue reading →