XPost: rec.sport.olympics, alt.politics.international, us.politics   
   XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, sac.politics   
   From: jonball@work.org   
      
   It isn’t easy being Eileen Gu.   
      
   The champion freestyle skier said the other day, after she had to settle   
   for a silver medal in an event at the Olympics, that “sometimes it feels   
   like I’m carrying the weight of two countries on my shoulders.”   
      
   Gu would be carrying the weight of only one country if she had chosen to   
   represent her native USA at the games, rather than a hostile   
   totalitarian state.   
      
   Gu skis for China, a choice that is a little like deciding to a   
   represent a fascist country during the 1930s.   
      
   China is bent on undermining US power and supplanting Western values.   
      
   It runs a gulag and has established a surveillance state that would make   
   George Orwell blush.   
      
   It is contemplating an invasion of Taiwan and is almost certainly the   
   country most likely to nuke Los Angeles in a major war.   
      
   Gu’s explanations for why she turned her back on the country where she   
   was born and raised (her mother is a Chinese immigrant) are tinny and   
   unpersuasive.   
      
   She’s spent significant time in China and says she admires Chinese   
   culture, but there would be many ways to express that feeling without   
   giving Beijing the propaganda victory of a superstar athlete draping   
   herself in its flag.   
      
   She says she thought she could inspire more girls to take up skiing by   
   competing for China, with its nascent freestyle skiing program, than if   
   she stuck with the U.S.   
      
   Really? Given that Gu is charismatic and gorgeous and has a legitimate   
   modeling career on top of being a top-notch skier, she’d still be a   
   compelling ambassador for the sport even if she competed under the Stars   
   and Stripes.   
      
   What Gu insists had absolutely nothing to do with her decision is money,   
   although she made an estimated $23 million over the last year, padded by   
   a litany of Chinese endorsement deals.   
      
   Who knows what inducements she’s been offered to be the centerpiece of   
   Beijing’s effort to recruit more foreign athletes in order to enhance   
   its national prestige?   
      
   Gu came to the defense of US Olympian Hunter Hess, after President   
   Donald Trump slammed the freestyle skier for saying he has “mixed   
   emotions” about representing the United States.   
      
   She said the controversy “runs contrary to everything the Olympics   
   should be.”   
      
   This is rich coming from Gu, who feels an obligation to stay quiet about   
   much worse than an immigration agency enforcing immigration law.   
      
   She wouldn’t dare, say, mention the name of Jimmy Lai, the persecuted   
   Hong Kong dissident who isn’t young, pretty or athletic, just   
   extraordinarily brave.   
      
   When Time magazine asked Gu about China’s systematic repression of the   
   Uyghurs, she said she’s “not an expert” and it’s not “my business.”   
      
   Asked whether, as a Stanford University international-relations major,   
   she could learn something about it, she said she doesn’t trust “data,”   
   needs to do extensive research on the ground and “this is a lifelong   
   search.”   
      
   So, perhaps when Gu is 92, she finally will have established whether or   
   not China is now abusing the Uyghurs.   
      
   This is obviously a cowardly dodge — and from a celebrity athlete who   
   preaches “empowerment.”   
      
   Gu portrays herself as a bridge to China, but she’s really a symbol of   
   how its closed system corrupts all that it touches.   
      
   It tells you all that you need to know that she won’t even say whether   
   she’s still a US citizen.   
      
   She needs to be a Chinese national to compete under its flag, and China   
   isn’t supposed to allow dual citizenship.   
      
   There is an alternative model here: US figure-skater Alysa Liu was   
   courted by China, but her father, who fled the country after Tiananmen   
   Square, would have none of it.   
      
   China responded with a campaign of surveillance and intimidation, and   
   there were fears for Liu’s safety when she competed at the Beijing   
   Olympics in 2022.   
      
   In other words, Liu carried the weight of rejecting an insidious   
   authoritarian regime, a burden Gu knows nothing about.   
      
   X: @RichLowry   
      
   https://nypost.com/2026/02/13/opinion/olympian-eileen-gus-decision-to-snu   
   b-us-to-ski-for-china-is-nothing-short-of-a-hypocrisy/   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)