OUR MEN’S HOCKEY TEAM’S HISTORIC WIN WAS JUST TOO MUCH FOR SPORTS WRITERS TO BEAR:
The charge against the men’s team seems to be four-fold. First, that, having won the gold, its members declined to address the “tide of fascism in the United States” and instead said gauche hyper-nationalistic things, such as, “This is all about our country right now,” “I love the USA,” “I’m so proud to be American today,” “This is for every American,” “It’s the greatest country in the world,” and “Everyone better be wearing the red, white, and blue for as long as they can.” Second, that during a post-game phone call with a rollicking President Trump, the players didn’t band together on the spot to push back against his supposedly sexist jokes — or apologize later for their complicity. Third, that the team subsequently agreed to go to the White House to celebrate their victory — and, even worse, that it seems excited by that prospect. Fourth, that the FBI director, Kash Patel, went over to Italy to watch the game and then chugged beer with the team in the locker room. Together, the sporting press is keen to inform us, these decisions have “sullied” the USA’s victory and ruined the reputations of its architects for all time.
What nonsense this all is. What narrow, monomaniacal, outlandish, freakish guff. I had a low opinion of sports writers before the last 48 hours, but good grief do I now want to throw the entire corps into a lake. The USA men’s team wins the gold for the first time in 46 years, and the news cycle following that achievement is stocked with fringe, politicized crap. I am reminded in this moment of Margaret Thatcher, berating the press after the recapture of South Georgia during the Falklands War. “Just rejoice at that news,” Thatcher said, “and congratulate our forces and the Marines.” Amen, Maggie. Just rejoice, and congratulate our team. I promise you’ll live through the ordeal. Not everything has to be a campus psychodrama. Not all stories need to “surface the nuances of” this or that. Not every incident that tangentially involves Donald Trump requires his elevation to the star of the tale. It’s okay to be happy that the United States won something, without finding 100 other reasons to be sad, angry, indignant, or confused. There really is no need to stretch to canonize a woman who represents another country when we have our own heroes before our very eyes. Rejoice!
Journalists are not politicians, and there is no need for them to be perfectly representative of the nation. But it might be a good thing for our culture if they weren’t all massive weirdos.
One of the cliches of the newspaper business is to call the sports section the paper’s “candy store” or “toy department.” (Hoping to get a rise out of Bill Parcells in 2004, Mike Wallace of Sixty Minutes told him that he — Parcells — worked in the toy department.) Most sports writers see themselves as capable of crafting far meatier stuff than writing up sports games, and they wouldn’t get hired by their editors if they weren’t leftists, so of course they’re rooting for Eileen Gu and the CCP, and loathe American patriotism in general (scoundrel, last refuge of) and Trump specifically.
Think of the past couple of days as a dry run though, for what’s coming this summer:
The left’s meltdown during the America 250 celebrations this summer will make Chernobyl look like a middle school science project.
— Varad Mehta (@varadmehta) February 24, 2026
