Ep. 763 - Quitting Is Not Courageous
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
162.24384
Summary
The media is falling all over itself to celebrate Simone Biles for quitting the Olympic Games. She s the most inspiring and courageous quitter the world has ever seen, they tell us. But I m not so sure that I agree with this redefinition of courage and our 5 headlines, including the pathetic, desperate and grotesque display put on by the Democrats during a January 6th hearing. Also, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez now says that she was afraid that she would be raped. The CDC has also reinstated the mask mandate, but the question is whether anyone gives a damn about the CDC s mandates at this point? And in our daily cancellation, we ll discuss whether these sorts of displays should be welcome in our society at all.
Transcript
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, the media is falling all over itself to celebrate Simone Biles for quitting.
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She's the most inspiring and courageous quitter the world has ever seen, they tell us.
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But I'm not so sure that I agree with this redefinition of courage and our five headlines,
00:00:15.260
including the pathetic, desperate and grotesque display put on by the Democrats during the January 6th hearing yesterday.
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Also, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was not in the Capitol building that day, now says that she was afraid that she would be raped.
00:00:28.680
The CDC has also reinstated the mask mandate, but the question is whether anyone gives a damn about the CDC's mandates at this point.
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And in our daily cancellation, after a day filled with men crying on camera,
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we will discuss whether these sorts of displays should be welcome in our society at all.
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All of that and more today on the Matt Wall Show.
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From the way that Olympic gymnast Simone Biles is being praised this week,
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you might think that the decorated superstar put on a heroic display during the team competition in Tokyo yesterday
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Many prominent politicians like Ayanna Pressley and Cori Bush and many others have made public statements applauding her.
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The White House press secretary expressed gratitude and support.
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Said we all should express gratitude and support for Simone Biles.
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Deadspin gushed over the, what they call, the most impressive move of her career.
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Articles have been written extolling her bravery,
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declaring that her achievements this week have sent a, quote, powerful message to the world.
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The New Yorker described her, quote, radical courage.
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The New York Times talked about her champion mindset.
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She's been hailed for her strength and for setting an amazing example of being a great athlete,
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a great role model, all based on what she did yesterday.
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Women's advocacy groups have come to her defense, have thanked her for all that she's done.
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It has been perhaps the most effusive praise that has ever been heaped on a quitter.
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I mean, that's what Simone Biles did to earn this exuberant applause, after all.
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After struggling in the qualifying rounds and botching the first event in the women's team finals,
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The best gymnast on the squad, the leader, one of the most celebrated U.S. Olympic athletes of all time,
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chose to abandon her team in the middle of the finals.
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Her teammates would finish second behind Russia, while Biles went on to receive even more acclaim
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than a gold medal would have earned her, probably.
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There was some talk early on suggesting that Biles had been physically injured, but that was not the case.
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Biles has since explained that she left the competition in order to focus on her mental health
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She complained that the Olympics haven't been fun this year.
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She said, quote, this Olympic Games, I wanted it to be for myself when I came in,
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and I felt like I was still doing it for other people.
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Returning to this theme later, she said that it's important to put mental health first,
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because if you don't, then you're not going to enjoy your sport.
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She complained about the pressure that she's been under.
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Here's a little more from Biles herself explaining why she quit.
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And it's been really stressful, this Olympic Games, I think, just as a whole,
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not having an audience, there are a lot of different variables going into it.
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It's been a long week, it's been a long Olympic process, it's been a long year.
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So just a lot of different variables, and I think we're just a little bit too stressed out.
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But we should be out here having fun, and sometimes that's not the case.
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I just felt like it would be a little bit better to take a backseat, work on my mindfulness,
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and I knew that the girls would do an absolutely great job,
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and I didn't want to risk the team a medal for kind of my screw-ups,
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So I just decided that those girls need to go in and do the rest of the competition.
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Yeah, I say put mental health first, because if you don't,
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then you're not going to enjoy your sport, and you're not going to succeed as much as you want to.
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So it's okay sometimes to even sit out the big competitions to focus on yourself,
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because it shows how strong of a competitor and person that you really are.
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Now, the people who wish to make excuses for her have offered all kinds of rationales
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There have been lots of people online talking about, for example, her sexual assault,
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and speculating that somehow that might have contributed to this.
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But she has not once cited that as a reason for her decision.
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And frankly, it seems pretty disgusting to inject that into this discussion
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in hopes of bailing her out when she has not brought it up.
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There are others saying that she was essentially mentally incapacitated
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to the point that she physically couldn't perform the moves.
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But again, that's not really what she's saying.
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She has talked more broadly about her mental health,
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mentioned multiple times that she wasn't having fun,
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and said, again, multiple times that she needed to focus on herself.
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Now, the question is whether those are good reasons.
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Now, on one hand, there's nothing terribly surprising
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and they almost always do it because the thing they're quitting
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This is the universal rationale of all quitters everywhere for all time.
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In this case, there's no doubt that the difficult thing was very difficult indeed.
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The pressure she experiences as a world-famous athlete on a global stage
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must be quite burdensome on both an emotional and physical level.
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If Simone Biles had bailed on her team, as she did,
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instead of saying, well, I need you to focus on myself,
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If she had bailed on her team, apologized after the fact,
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and the public had reacted in an appropriately sort of bummed out kind of way to the news,
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then there wouldn't be much else to say on the matter.
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That's why when someone quits, we normally shake our heads and say,
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Nobody's suggesting that athletes who quit ought to be tarred and feathered in the street.
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They might do that in China, maybe, but we're not saying that for here.
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I'm not advocating that we put them in the stockades in the middle of the town square
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It's enough to be disappointed and be done with it.
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if she had quit, everyone was disappointed, she apologized,
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The problem is that now we are exhorted not simply to understand why someone quits,
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What makes the Simone Biles story troubling is not that the women's gymnastic team had to settle
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but that our cultural powers that be want us to celebrate cowardice.
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As always, it's not enough to merely tolerate another person's decision
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or to be compassionate towards their struggles.
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and joyously cheer what all people through history
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would consider shameful and unfortunate, at least.
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It's radical courage is the phrase being used to describe this.
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Not understandable, okay, not something we should sympathize with,
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but radically courageous to leave your team in the lurch.
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It's one thing to say, Simone Biles quit, but let's have some empathy.
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If that was the message, I would say, sure, yeah, sounds good.
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It is quite another to say, Simone Biles quit, isn't that so brave?
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To be brave is to refuse to quit precisely when most people would.
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and it'll become even more common now that we've rebranded it as courage.
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If we will grant to cowardice the rewards of courage
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without any of the effort and sacrifice it requires,
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The many defenders of Simone Biles have said that she's right,
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for prioritizing her mental health above all else.
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when there's nothing more important than the self's opinion of itself,
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it is perhaps no surprise that we should congratulate a woman
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for explicitly putting herself before her team and her country.
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That's not why you go to the Olympics for your country.
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If you want to focus on yourself, you don't go.
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Nobody is walking up to someone sitting on a park bench and saying,
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why aren't you in the Olympics right now, you selfish bastard?
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then you're not supposed to put yourself first.
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That is the duty, the responsibility that you have assumed for yourself.
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the get out of jail free card, mental health has been used.
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That is now the shield meant to insulate us from all criticism.
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Oh, you think you can criticize me for a decision I made?
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Well, you can't because it helped my mental health.
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The highest virtue now is the pursuit of your own mental well-being.
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Which is to say that courage is now the exact opposite
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of what it has always been and what it actually is still now today.
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how consistently the new moral code would even be applied.
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Would Tom Brady receive such a worshipful reaction
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if he left in the third quarter of a playoff game
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It's unthinkable because it would never happen.
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because this happens only once every four years
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as opposed to the Super Bowl, which happens every year.
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Especially if you're Tom Brady and you've been in like 10 of them.
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But you can't imagine Tom Brady, third quarter of the Super Bowl,
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Sure, there have been cases of sulking professional athletes
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leaving the field or the court a few seconds early
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because they were frustrated and sad during a bad loss.
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We've seen this move from LeBron James, for example,
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There are usually a few people willing to defend
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but they've never been celebrated like a returning war hero
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the way Simone Biles has been and Naomi Osaka before her.
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In fact, I was arguing this point with a sports writer
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on Twitter last night and he, in an attempt to defend Biles,
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because he was mad that he wasn't going to get the ball.
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I mean, in this case, he was mad that he wasn't giving it.
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and he wasn't getting it and so he was mad and he quit.
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To this day, he is criticized and for good reason.
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I've never heard anyone call him brave or congratulate him
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This is a privilege reserved only for female athletes at present.
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Maybe one day we'll celebrate both male and female quitters.
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Maybe we're fast approaching a time when the greatest athletes
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will be those who manage to feel the best about themselves while competing.
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You know, they won't need to perform any athletic feats at all.
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but at least we will know that nobody's mental health has been damaged.
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