Ep. 763 - Quitting Is Not Courageous
Episode Stats
Words per minute
162.24384
Harmful content
Misogyny
40
sentences flagged
Hate speech
33
sentences flagged
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,
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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.
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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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