U.S. Women [#8]: Meet Me in St. Louis

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olympic said:
Trumpers picking on a young, vulnerable woman who probably has done more in life at age 27 than any of them.
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She picked a fight, and she got one. Not something I'd do if I were preparing to skate at the Olympics, but hopefully it was worth it to her. If you poke the bear, be prepared for it to attack.

Many of the comments toward Glenn are nasty and beyond the pale, inexcusable. She is an adult and she chose to use her apolitical platform of skating at the Olympics to make a political statement that much of the country finds offensive. The blowback was entirely predictable. The consequences, both good and bad, are hers to own.
 
Badams said:
I can't deal with people who blame these athletes for their ANSWERS to QUESTIONS reporters are asking them. If you want to take politics out of the Olympics, then stop the reporters from inviting it.
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As someone who listened to that entire press conference, I'll just chime in to say I rolled my eyes at the question the reporter asked because it was obvious bait.

Bait that Amber took.

Mind, Amber is:

1) a fully grown, adult woman
2) she lives in Colorado Springs, home of the USOPC and tons of Olympic-caliber summer & winter athletes
3) does not exist in such a bubble where she is unaware of the cultural political firestorm generated by multiple issues during the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics just 18 months ago
4) has been through multiple USFS Champs Camps where they receive basic media training
5) has demonstrated that she is quite articulate & thoughtful in dozens of interviews over the past two seasons

Surely, this adult woman who is articulate & thoughtful & media trained could have chosen to NOT take the bait the reporter offered up. Surely, she and her team could have had the presence of mind to consider this MIGHT be a question asked of her and craft an artful enough response to dodge the question sufficiently to not piss off anyone back home.

But, nope, she took that bait, like it was catnip. And I rolled my eyes at her answer.

And then rolled my eyes two days later when she announced on her SM platforms that she was "taking a break from SM" due to all the hurtful, violent, hateful, abusive, bullying responses she received. Cynically, I even wondered if taking the reporter's bait was a form of subconscious self-sabotage. Here she was with a perfect victim excuse should she mess up in either the Team Event or her own individual event. And then, less than 48 hours after the USA won the TE gold, she came crawling back to social media. And the furor died down for a week until she biffed it, rather predictably, in her own short program.

Now, I will say that I've been wading into the comments on the various posts that have shown up on my X timeline to point out that her SP performance is not actually karma for running her mouth in that press conference the way she did, because, she's had exactly 1 clean SP in major, high-stakes, high-pressure competitions in the past 2 seasons. She can think whatever she wants about US politics. I don't have to agree with her and I certainly didn't wish her ill in her competition just because she chose to take the reporter's bait.

She's got her reasons for doing so and I'm not even sure those reasons were, deep down, because she thinks she or any other person in this country feels oppressed for whatever reason. She's a headcase in competition, always has been, always will be, and this was a nice way to set herself up with her like-minded fans into the belief that she's being victimized. She's not. She's a grown adult and it would be nice if she took responsibility for her actions and acknowledged how her own behavior contributed to the dialogue now taking place online. All of which was as predictable as her error-ridden short program two days ago.
 
And thank you again to @Cachoo for this gift link as well - I've quoted Sasha's entire response to McCaulley below:
Cachoo said:
Best Olympic Moments including commentary by Sasha Cohen:
www.nytimes.com

Opinion | The Best Moments So Far at the Winter Olympics

Three writers and an Olympic medalist on the grit and grace of the winter games.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
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McCaulley: I want to follow up on something that you said when you mentioned taking a long break from watching the Olympics. Can you explain what it’s like for someone who’s had that kind of spotlight and had that much of their life dedicated to something, as you have, and then just to say: “The pressure is so great, I need to turn off even watching my sport for a period of time.”
Can you explain what that experience is like or what leads someone down that road? Is it the attention that comes with it? Is it the pressure? Is it the scrutiny?
Cohen: I think it’s probably different for each athlete. Personally, I can speak to my experience, and my Olympic Games in Torino did not go as I hoped it to. I ended up with a silver medal. I made two mistakes. I was injured going in and not able to prepare, and I just lived in this pressure cooker.
I didn’t go to the opening or closing ceremonies. I stayed in an apartment away from the village to try to focus, and I just knew everything that I had been training for was going to boil down to these few minutes. How was I going to do it when I wasn’t prepared? Twenty years later, I am so grateful for that silver medal, for that experience, and for skating a really strong program after my mistakes.
But I couldn’t watch for a while. Every time I saw the Olympic rings or heard that music and saw other skaters warming up backstage or about to take the ice, I would relive my own programs and disappointments. If somebody fell, it would remind me of my own mistakes. If someone skated perfectly, I’d say: “That was a program I wish I could have done.”
It was a lot. I think I needed space to develop as a person and have other outside interests. You wait long enough and then I realized that, hey, no matter what I do, skating is always such an integral part of who I am.
It defined me. The people that I love, that I trained with, that I competed with, the way that we have moved through life and have oriented our goals and dreams around a moment in the Olympic Games and making crazy decisions and sacrificing so much because the Olympics are such a big dream — it was a homecoming to come back.
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Now it’s so exciting because I’ve been watching at home with my kids and they’re like: “Mom, you were in the Olympics. Were you better than her? Were you better than her?” I was like, “Yeah, 20 years ago.”
I’m really enjoying watching, and that is such a gift that I can watch the Olympic Games again, because that’s how it all started.
[...]
Cohen: Twenty years later, I have the perspective where I can appreciate the silver medal and, yes, I want to go back in time and skate my personal best. But not training and being injured, I wasn’t able to prepare.
Twenty years later, it’s just another reminder that the human body does not always do what you want it to do — whether as a normal person with your health or as an athlete being able to prevent injuries and be at your best at the moment when it is the most important.
I think I’ve given myself some grace and understanding of not only the life cycle, but the strength and the frailty of the human body, and also how much we can’t control — even when we try to control everything.
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Badams said:
Ahh, yes...because death threats are totally normal and predictable when you disagree with someone's words.
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Just stop. At this point in time, in our current political environment, yes, this is actually pretty predictable.

I'm not excusing those threats either but let's not pretend that the same thing doesn't get directed toward conservatives on SM from the progressive left - I've seen it from FS fans on other platforms directed at various figure skaters who may be MAGA because they follow certain other accounts or went to the WH during Trump's first term with the rest of the US Olympians. I'm sure you'll dismiss what I've seen with my own eyes and tell me that those people don't really MEAN it, that they'd never take action, likewise, most of the people posting against Amber are never going to take any action - but all it takes is one crazy on either side to do something truly harmful.

There's a lot of hateful stuff out there and, again, you can choose to avoid putting yourself in the line of fire by not taking the reporter's bait.
 
The thing that makes me crazy is that what Amber said was REALLY TAME.

Here is the actual quote.

“It’s been a hard time for the community overall in this administration. It isn’t the first time that we’ve had to come together as a community and try and fight for our human rights.…I hope I can use my platform and my voice throughout these Games to try and encourage people to stay strong in these hard times.”

"A hard time?" "Stay strong?" All of this is really quite innocuous. Jeez.
 
Karen-W said:
She's a headcase in competition, always has been, always will be
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Through the years, over and over again, I've heard this exact sentiment from people who are connected to USFS insiders re. Amber. All I can say is, I'm very proud this "headcase" has made it all the way to the freakin' Olympics AND helped her teammates win the gold medal! :cheer2: (I'm still shocked, actually, she was chosen to skate the FS segment and so glad that she held up as well as she did under all the pressure.)
 
Sylvia said:
Through the years, over and over again, I've heard this exact sentiment from people who are connected to USFS insiders re. Amber. All I can say is, I'm very proud this "headcase" has made it all the way to the freakin' Olympics AND helped her teammates win the gold medal! :cheer2: (I'm still shocked, actually, she was chosen to skate the FS segment and so glad that she held up as well as she did under all the pressure.)
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I have no problem with her making the Olympic team and give her tons of kudos for harnessing her obvious mental focus issues enough to win her spot on the team or get a TE assignment. And I certainly didn't want her to skate poorly at the Olympics - most definitely not because she chose to make a comment about the political climate in the country.

toddlj said:
The thing that makes me crazy is that what Amber said was REALLY TAME.

Here is the actual quote.

“It’s been a hard time for the community overall in this administration. It isn’t the first time that we’ve had to come together as a community and try and fight for our human rights.…I hope I can use my platform and my voice throughout these Games to try and encourage people to stay strong in these hard times.”

"A hard time?" "Stay strong?" All of this is really quite innocuous. Jeez.
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Sure, in print it looks tame... Was it tamely delivered? That's debatable. Again, the reporter teed this up and made it political by asking about the current administration. Had Amber left that first sentence out and just spoken vaguely about fighting for human rights, blah blah blah, she wouldn't have become a target for criticism from the right.

As it is, I've seen skaters DURING these Olympics, getting targeted by the progressive FSTW denizens for following various different conservative politicians, organizations or influencers, including at least one other Team Event gold medalist. That person hasn't commented on politics at the Olympics and hasn't used their SM platform and voice to advocate for anything, yet there are crazies who would gladly have that person cancelled or worse simply for FOLLOWING a conservative SM account.
 
Coco said:
You see it as picking a fight, normal people see it as simply trying to exist without shame.

You can't simultaneously say people speaking out against her were inexcusable and say she owns their behavior.
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She owns HER behavior, and she has received a lot of positive publicity for her statement and subsequent “woke b*tches winning” comments. She also has to deal with the negative consequences of pandering to half of the country she represents (and 98% of the media of that country) while alienating the other half by publicly disrespecting the VP and the administration. She is an adult, and there are many other answers she could have given.

I’m wondering whether an athlete who used the Olympics to publicly support the Trump administration would be receiving the same treatment from those here :saint:. The U.S. remains a deeply divided country, and any athlete who expresses a political opinion (of any type) without expecting blowback is crazy. I’m sorry for Glenn that the blowback has been extreme and hate-filled, but not all of it is hate and some of it is par for the course.
 
Would this discussion be better suited to a different thread? I choose not to go into PI because I use skating as an escape from the rest of the world. If this discussion keeps going, could someone tell me when it's safe to return to this thread?
 
Karen-W said:
Sure, in print it looks tame... Was it tamely delivered? That's debatable. Again, the reporter teed this up and made it political by asking about the current administration. Had Amber left that first sentence out and just spoken vaguely about fighting for human rights, blah blah blah, she wouldn't have become a target for criticism from the right.
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Oh, please. You know damn well that isn't true. And her delivery definitely was quite calm, definitely not very strident or virulent. She was asked a question and she answered it. Many hate her for daring to say something critical related to the Trump Administration. Some of them hate her merely for who she is.

Private Citizen said:
I’m wondering whether an athlete who used the Olympics to publicly support the Trump administration would be receiving the same treatment from those here :saint:.
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I'm pretty sure that if someone used the Olympics to say that they hoped the Trump Administration would strip gay people of their rights and kill more protesters, a lot of people here would find such statements repugnant. But, if there were threats against such a person for making the statements, I would think it was wrong and would have no problem saying so. I think a lot of people here would.
Private Citizen said:
She also has to deal with the negative consequences of pandering to half of the country she represents
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Pandering? She answered the question. She has posted messages before in support of the LGBTQ+ community. And part of the reason she does that is so that people who are feeling marginalized, hated, and targeted feel less so and feel less alone because she knows what that feels like. She does the same thing - more frequently - with mental health issues. I say kudos to her. I'm not surprised, though, that certain posters here think we shouldn't be upset about the threats she received for simply answering a question in a pretty innocuous way and that she should just shut up when asked a question instead of expressing herself. I doubt they think that the people who have political views similar to theirs should just shut up when asked a question and should be fine with it if they get threats as a result.
 
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