PIERS IS SPOT ON! ..... BIDEN IS DEAD WRONG WHEN HE BACKS PEOPLE WHO DISRESPECT THE FLAG THAT HIS LATE SON BEAU SERVED UNDER IN IRAQ

If Gwen Berry can't hear the national anthem without throwing a tantrum, she should let someone else go to the Olympics who feels pride, not shame in their country - and who won't embarrass America in front of the whole world

 

By Piers Morgan 

Daily Mail

June 28, 2021

 

The Tokyo Olympics haven't even started yet, but we already have a clear Gold-medal favourite in the Attention-Seeking Brat race.

I had assumed that Japanese tennis star Naomi Osaka might win this, after her fit of indignation at the French Open tournament in which she was outraged by the thought journalists might ask her any negative questions.

As Boris Becker, who won Wimbledon aged just 17, six years younger than Osaka, said this week: 'Is that really pressure? Isn't it pressure when you don't have food on the table? When you've got to feed your family and you don't have a job? When you have a life-changing injury? Isn't that more pressure? You're 23, you're healthy, you're wealthy, your family is good. Where is the fucking pressure?'

 

Of course, having blamed her ridiculous behaviour on the grounds of mental health – the go-to excuse for so many high-profile people these days when they do something dumb – Osaka's made a miraculous recovery from her self-induced trauma in time to take part in her country's biggest ever sporting event.

I confidently predict Ms Osaka will be talking very happily to the media should she win Gold in front of her home fans, because the enormous increased fame and adulation it will bring her will translate into yet more millions of dollars for the world's highest-earning female athlete.

Indeed, she has already started the self-promotion tour by being this month's Japan Vogue cover star, in which the interviewer kindly never asked her any negative questions….

But I fear narcissist Naomi's only going to end up with silver in the Attention-Seeking Brat competition, for we now have a comfortable new front-runner in the form of American Hammer thrower Gwen Berry.

I've seen some outrageous antics from athletes in my time, but Ms Berry's narcissistic tour de force at the US Olympics trials in Oregon on Saturday takes the proverbial biscuit.

She was on the podium, having come third, when the American national anthem began playing.

Normally, this would be a moment of great pride and tearful joy for any Olympian.

But not Ms Berry.

Oh no.

This was clearly one of the worst moments of her life.

As the two other competitors who had beaten her turned respectfully to face the American flag and placed their hands on their hearts, furious Berry turned the other way, placed her hands angrily on her hips, and then held up a T-shirt proclaiming the words 'ATHLETE ACTIVIST' before putting it over her head.

She preened, she sulked, she sighed, she frowned, and she eye-rolled in one of the most pathetic tantrums I've ever seen from anyone supposedly representing their country.

Berry claimed she'd been 'set up' by organizers who knew she would hate standing on the podium as the Star Spangled Banner played.

'I felt like they did it on purpose,' she moaned.

Really, Gwen?

You think the people running a huge and very complex logistical operation like the US Olympic trials during a global pandemic had nothing better to do than secretly plot to annoy you, the third best female performer at the Hammer?

God, the mind-blowing dismissive arrogance of this statement.

No offence, but to borrow a line from Top Gun, methinks your ego's writing cheques your body can't cash.

The truth is that the anthem has been played at around the same time, 5.30pm, on each day of the trials. The Hammer presentation just happened to coincide it with it yesterday.

'They had enough opportunities to play the national anthem before we got up there,' Berry continued. 'I was thinking about what I should do. Eventually I stayed there, and I swayed, I put my shirt over my head. It was real disrespectful.'

Sorry, WHAT?

It was 'disrespectful' of the Olympic trials organisers to play the national anthem as three athletes stood on a podium?

Does she have any idea what happens at the actual Olympics?

Let me help you, Ms Berry: they play the national anthem of each event's winning competitor as they stand with the 2nd and 3rd placed athletes on a podium.

'I didn't really want to be up there,' she added. 'I was hot, I was ready to take my pictures and get into some shade.'

Again, the self-absorption is breath-taking, and so insulting to her two fellow athletes standing with her at what they considered to be one of the greatest moments of their lives.

Berry's snarky attitude prompts the question: what exactly is going to happen when she gets to Tokyo?

If she wins, are we going to see a repeat of her petulance in front of a billion viewers?

What message would that send to the world?

I know what it would tell me, as a Brit who loves America: that, regardless of what she says to the contrary, she hates the United States.

I've no problem with sports people making respectful gestures to register their protest about something that matters to them.

They have big platforms and in America, they live in a democracy that protects free speech with the First Amendment.

But as NFL star Colin Kaepernick discovered the hard way, there's a difference between being openly disrespectful (sitting out the anthem) and being respectful (kneeling).

And what Gwen Berry did on Sunday was just brazenly rude.

She may as well have flipped the bird.

Her behaviour sparked understandable outrage.

 

 

 

Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a man who lost his eye in an explosion while serving as a US Navy Seal in Afghanistan, so knows what it means to represent your country, said: 'She should be removed from the team. The entire point of being on the Olympic team is to represent the United States of America. That should be the bear minimum requirement, that you believe in the country you're representing.'

Supporters of Berry countered the criticism by saying there's a rank hypocrisy in the fury from many Republicans who didn't castigate the rioters at Capitol Hill on January 6.

To which I say, yes – there is.

But it's perfectly possibly to think those rioters were violent criminals who committed an insurrection against their country's democracy AND to think that Gwen Berry's shockingly insulting response to the American national anthem being played was a disgracefully disrespectful way to represent her country.

As the furore grew over her behaviour, she doubled down.

'I never said I hated this country!' she tweeted. 'People try to put words in my mouth but they can't. That's why I speak out. I LOVE MY PEOPLE. These comments really show that: 1.) people in America rally patriotism over basic morality. 2.) Even after the murder of George Floyd and so many others; the commercials, statements, and phony sentiments regarding black lives were just a hoax.'

Hmmmm.

Let's take a beat here, Ms Berry.

If you don't hate your country, then you have a very strange way of showing your love for it.

And there's a wider point to all this.

Sport is supposed to be a unifier, isn't it?

As Nelson Mandela said: 'Sport can create hope where once there was only despair. It is more powerful than governments in breaking down racial barriers.'

He was a man who understood very clearly the need to bring racially divided people together, not drag them even further apart.

Gwen Berry seems to think the opposite and seems to have forgotten the whole point of the Olympics.

'I don't need to do anything sport-wise,'' she said about her trip to Tokyo. 'What I need to do is speak for my community, to represent my community and to help my community. Because that's more important than sports.'

Is it?

Well, if your work as an activist is more important than sports, Ms Berry, then why not give up the Hammer-throwing and concentrate on that?

The Olympics are supposed to be about the world's greatest athletes competing to see who's best at their sport - not who's the best activist.

After years of incendiary racial disunity in America, and in the middle of a pandemic that's caused so much pain and heartache for millions of people, I imagine most Americans are looking to the Games as a much-needed few weeks of escapism in which they can come together to cheer on their athletes under the common umbrella of being proud Americans.

The very last thing they need or want is an American athlete using the Olympic Games as a chance to diss their country in front of the entire world.

I don't believe in cancel culture, so won't be joining those like Dan Crenshaw who say Gwen Berry should be dropped from the US Olympic team for expressing herself in a way I dislike.

She is entitled to her opinion.

But I would simply ask her this: if you genuinely feel such shame in America's anthem and flag that you feel the need to throw such a pathetic tantrum, why would you WANT to represent your country?

Surely the braver, more principled thing to do is withdraw, and let someone replace you who feels pride, not shame, in representing America? 

__________

White House BACKS hammer thrower Gwen Berry: Psaki says Biden respects her 'right' to turn away from the flag and being a patriot means to recognize when the US 'hasn't lived up to our highest ideal'

 

White House press secretary Jen Psaki defended hammer thrower Gwen Berry's right to 'peacefully protest,' after the Tokyo-bound athlete turned her back on the US flag during Olympic trials.

Psaki told Fox News' Peter Doocy at Monday's press briefing that while she and President Joe Biden hadn't spoken specifically about the incident, Biden is 'incredibly proud to be an American and has great respect for the anthem and all that it respresents, especially for our men and women serving in uniform all around the world.' 

'He would also say, of course, that part of that pride in our country means recognizing there are moments where we are, as a country, haven't lived up to our highest ideals, and that means respecting the rights of people, granted to them in the Constitution, to peacefully protest,' Psaki added.

 

EDITOR'S NOTE: Biden is dead wrong and should be ashamed of himself!  An important part of being patriotic is to be respectful of the flag that represents the country you live in.

Berry has every right to express her hatred for America, but not during the playing of the National Anthem!

Biden's sorry defense of Berry merely encourages other people to disrespect our flag and country.  If enough Americans lose pride in our country, the US will go the way of the Roman Empire.