Let the Games Chagrin
Eileen Gu, who shrugged off China’s humanitarian atrocities, was the perfect face for a Beijing Games that never should have happened.
The closing ceremonies of the 2022 Beijing Olympics couldn’t come soon enough for NBC, who just broadcasted the biggest Games flop of the modern age. With ratings in the basement and its credibility in tatters, no one is quite sure what the network got for its $7.75 billion dollar investment — except very expensive heartburn. When the curtain finally came down on the disaster that was the Winter Games, there were winners, to be sure. But there were, for the first time, many more losers — and the sporting world that allowed China to host was the biggest.
In many ways, Eileen Gu — the American ski star who competed for China — summed up the whole Olympics. The rising Stanford freshman, who shrugged off the regime’s humanitarian atrocities, was the perfect face for a Beijing Games that never should have happened. Pressed about her decision to abandon the U.S. team and compete for genocidal communists, Gu said indifferently that she is “not trying to solve political problems right now.”
HBO’s Bill Maher, like a lot of Americans hoisting the red, white, and blue, was beside himself. “She chose to represent a totalitarian police state over America,” he ranted on “Real Time.” Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley, who probably doesn’t find herself on Maher’s side often, was just as incensed. Choose, she demanded. “In terms of citizenship, look — China or the U.S.? You have got to pick a side. Period…. [Y]ou’re either American or you’re Chinese, and they are two very different countries… Every athlete needs to know when they put their flag on, you’re standing for freedom or you’re standing for human rights abuses. There is no in-between.”
It was a message that could — and should — have resonated with every U.S. entity: NBC, Hollywood, America’s Olympic sponsors, Big Business, and Big Tech. Long before the Beijing torch was lit, they — like Gu — were all on Team China. And if they think, after this catastrophe of a Games, that it endeared them to anyone, they’re wrong.
For NBC, who gambled on a long-term deal with the Olympics, the damage to their brand was severe. Sports analysts called it “bleak,” a “low-water mark.” “I thought that the Olympics in China — with all of these issues surrounding it — would have meant record viewership on NBC,” expert Gordon Chang said. “But that obviously was not the case. There was a record, but it was record low. So I’m really surprised about that. You know, it’s one of those things where to borrow a word from another religion. I actually do believe there’s karma in the world, and NBC suffered it.”
The network, who devoted only a handful of minutes to China’s Uyghur torture network, might have won the PR battle if it used its platform to draw attention to the abuses of the communist party. They didn’t. And ironically, that silence only made the outside voices louder. The international outcry — in TV and sponsor boycotts — helped net the lowest number of viewers (11.4 million in primetime) since NBC took over the broadcast in 1988, a 47 percent drop from the 2018 Games in South Korea.
For U.S. sponsors Coca-Cola, Airbnb, Intel, Visa, and Proctor & Gamble, who desperately downplayed their involvement at home, consumer sentiment has been chilly. “[These companies] sent two messages,” Chang argued — one heavily promoting their investment in Beijing while turning around and taking a nothing-to-see-here attitude at home. “And I think that’s a real indication that these companies knew that what they were doing was wrong, that what they were doing was complicit in these crimes against humanity. They did not want to highlight their role as backing the Olympics and therefore backing China and therefore backing what China has been doing against Uyghurs, Tibetans, and other minorities.”
And while America’s CEOs might want to keep the lid on their Beijing investments, that will be tough to do now that Chinese state media is heralding the shopping boom hitting the manufacturers involved in the Olympics. Snowboard companies, clothes retailers, even ski pole and snowshoe makers, are experiencing a “windfall in sales,” the Global Times declares. And thanks to athletes like Gu, who thrilled fashion elites when she pulled off her gloves to reveal Tiffany & Co. rings, U.S. brands are also inextricably tied to the stain of these Games.
Every one of them, Chang argues, is now vulnerable. “Because what they’ve done is they’ve mortgaged their future and put it into the hands of a regime… that has already done things, of course, that Americans abhor. And that means that NBA, Hollywood, Wal-Mart, all of these big institutions and companies have now been identified and have placed their future in the hands of people they can’t control. People who are monsters.”
Now that those realities are front and center in the U.S., China’s enablers are in trouble. Yes, the Olympics might have helped the regime’s image internally, but it also gave critics a global platform to talk about their atrocities — and the United States’ corporate involvement. Anyone who doesn’t want to see innocent people persecuted for their religious beliefs knows that they can take a stand simply by refusing to buy products from China and the American companies like Nike, Apple, Coca-Cola, and others excusing their supply-chain slave labor.
We may not be able to take on communist China, Chang agreed, but “with our everyday purchasing decisions, we can strike a blow for freedom and democracy and… for all the things that we believe in. We can also make that decision with our investments, not investing in China, telling our investment managers, ‘No, don’t put our money in stocks X, Y, and Z. We can do a number of small things each of us. You know, there’s just so many of us. There’s more of us than them, and collectively we do wield great power.” If Beijing 2022 showed us anything, it’s time to use it. Not just for our sake — but for theirs.
Originally published here.
Behind Ukrainian Lines
“The adults are back in charge.” That’s what Joe Biden wanted the world to believe after his sit-down with Russian President Vladimir Putin last June. “We’ll find out with the next six months to a year whether or not we actually have a strategic dialogue that matters,” he said. Well, less than a year later — as Russian tanks roll through the separatist regions of Ukraine, beating the drums of war — we have our answer.
The White House, who never managed to mop up Biden’s acceptance of a “minor incursion” in Ukraine, was forced to admit Tuesday morning that an “invasion is an invasion, and that is what’s underway.” While the West went to bed, Putin’s idea of “peacekeeping” troops finally set foot on Ukrainian soil — triggering furious international reaction and bringing civilians closer to a conflict they prayed wouldn’t come.
In Donbas, where the fighting has volleyed on and off since 2014, locals raced to evacuate women and children. Inside the villages, where separatists celebrated Putin’s decision to formally recognize the “breakaway” regions of Ukraine, the news confirmed everyone’s worst fears: war is no longer a hypothetical.
A calm but determined Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, insisted his country was “not afraid of anything or anyone.” “It is very important to see now who our real friend and partner is, and who will continue to scare the Russian Federation with words only.” The U.S., who could very well be the unnamed “who” Zelensky is talking about, condemned Putin’s decision, while President Biden rushed to sign an executive order that stops all new investment, trade, and financing by Americans in the breakaway regions. Full-blown sanctions, the White House told reporters, may follow.
But to House Republicans, like Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.), the action comes too late. Like most conservatives, she thinks Biden should have used sanctions as a deterrent — not a punishment. “You don’t wait until perhaps tens of thousands of people are killed and missiles have been launched and airplanes attack and drop bombs and ships shoot off missiles and tanks, invade your country — and then put in sanctions,” Hartzler argued.
Combat veteran Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) agreed. While the U.S. dragged its feet, he pointed out, Russia “prepared their economy.” It’s interesting, he said on “Washington Watch. Putin has spent the last several weeks safeguarding Russia’s reserves while the West bickers about what to do. "They converted their currency. They got rid of all their dollars. They’re in a better place. It still will be devastating to their economy,” but it won’t inflict the kind of pain it would have if Democrats had stopped dithering and cut Russia’s trade lines sooner. At this point, NRO’s Jim Geraghty grumbled, the Biden administration is bringing “economic sanctions to a gunfight.”
NATO, meanwhile, warned Tuesday that Russia is still planning a “full-scale” attack. “They are out of their camps, in the field and ready to strike,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg declared. The whole world, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) responded, “is watching.” He called on Biden to bring down a heavier hammer, forcing Putin to “pay a price.”
At the end of the day, Hartzler shakes her head, this whole situation is “very serious” and “very heartbreaking.” “This is a free and independent people — a democracy. Many of [the Ukrainians] are Christians, and the thought that you have a thug like Vladimir Putin who just wants to take a country through raw power is just absolutely [tragic]. And the weakness of our own president has, sadly, only enabled this to take place. After what President Biden did with the debacle of leaving Afghanistan, it just showed how weak we are. And this president has not negotiated in good faith with Putin from the beginning. He’s acquiesced, and now we’re at a doorstep of losing this nation and their freedom being squashed. It’s truly a dark day.”
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.
