Fox News Executive Vice President John Moody is calling on the country to “focus on the winner of the race, not the race of the winner,” at this year’s Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea.
In an Op-Ed, Moody pleaded for sports fans to forget about race and sexual orientation as they root for Team U.S.A. and to focus only on their superior abilities. In his February 8 editorial, Moody noted that the motto of the Olympics is “Faster, Higher, Stronger,” but that too many are seemingly more interested in turning the games “Darker, Gayer, Different.” This, he says, is not a good way to win medals.
Unfortunately, instead of worrying about the actual athletic abilities of our U.S. Olympics teams, it appears that the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) is more worried about the “diversity” of our athletes:
A USOC official was quoted this week expressing pride (what else?) about taking the most diverse U.S. squad ever to the Winter Olympics. That was followed by a, frankly, embarrassing laundry list of how many African-Americans, Asians and openly gay athletes are on this year’s U.S. team. No sport that we are aware of awards points – or medals – for skin color or sexual orientation.
Moody wonders if our Olympians were chosen at least in part because of their “diversity” instead of being excellent at their sport.
“Were our Olympians selected because they’re the best at what they do, or because they’re the best publicity for our current obsession with having one each from Column A, B and C?” Moody asked.
Moody went on to praise those American athletes such as Jackie Robinson who broke barriers in the past but also pointed out that Robinson and other such sports figures won their spots in history due to hard work and excellence, not merely because of their “diversity.”
The Fox executive vice president went on to point out that political correctness does not make an athlete:
Insisting that sports bow to political correctness by assigning teams quotas for race, religion or sexuality is like saying that professional basketball goals will be worth four points if achieved by a minority in that sport – white guys, for instance – instead of the two or three points awarded to black players, who make up 81 percent of the NBA. Any plans to fix that disparity? Didn’t think so.
Moody agrees that we should not deny people their due because of their race or sexual proclivities, but we also should not reward them because of those things. “At the Olympic level, not everyone is a winner. Not everyone gets a little plastic trophy to take home,” he writes.
“Sorry. ‘Faster, Higher, Stronger’ still works better than ‘We win because we’re different,'” Moody concluded.
UPDATE: Fox News removed this column on Friday and asked that we include the following statement from the network: “John Moody’s column does not reflect the views or values of FOX News and has been removed.”
CNN senior media reporter Oliver Darcy shared a tweet from GLAAD. Which states that the group doesn’t believe Fox went far enough in simply removing Moody’s article:
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.
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