SelwynDuke.com

The Olympics and Feminist-style Reporting

By Selwyn Duke

It’s difficult to say if the greatest drama of the 2012 Olympics has occurred inside or outside the athletic arena, but it’s hard for anything to compare to the controversy that recently surrounded 16-year-old Chinese swim sensation Ye Shiwen.  The story started on Saturday when Ye shattered the women’s world record in the 400-meter Individual Medley in a time of 4:28.43, beating the old mark by more than a second.

If a second constitutes a “shattered” record—and it does at that high level—you can only imagine what a 14 or 23-second difference is: it’s a vast ocean away.  So it should surprise no one that those also happen to be the number of seconds Ye was slower than, respectively, the last finisher in the men’s 400m IM, and its winner, Ryan Lochte.

Handicaps and Handicapped Thinking

By Selwyn Duke

Just as mighty contests can rise from trivial things, mighty principles are often slain in their name. And good examples of this are often found in sports.

There’s an Olympic runner named Oscar Pistorius who has made headlines for two very unusual reasons. First, he has no legs below the knee. Second, he’s not competing in the Special Olympics — but on the grand stage set to commence in London this month.

Pistorius, a South African whose blade-like prosthetics have earned him the nickname “blade runner,” qualified for the Olympic 400-meter event. And he did it by beating able-bodied competitors. This makes his story inspirational to many, an accomplishment one may think should only be applauded. Yet there is another side to it: Some say that Pistorius may have an unfair advantage.

This claim was made most recently by American Olympic gold medalist Michael Johnson, who said that while he considers Pistorius a friend, it’s ultimately wrong to allow prosthetic-wearing competitors to square off against the able-bodied. Writes the Telegraph:

Read the rest here.

North Dakotans Refuse to Fight for the Sioux — or the Culture

By Selwyn Duke

Earlier this week I wrote about North Dakota’s extraordinary referendum to ban all property taxes. Quite predictably, the state’s residents reacted to it in a very ordinary way: They defeated it by a wide margin.

This isn’t surprising since people, especially conservatives, are generally uncomfortable with revolutionary ideas. Well, good ones, anyway. This is why only a third of colonists supported the American Revolution; the rest had to be dragged along to the Promised Land kicking and screaming. It’s also why our Founding Fathers were not conservative — or Conservatives.

Assenting to thoroughly stupid but fashionable ideas is a different matter, however. And this is why 67 percent of North Dakotans also agreed on Tuesday to allow the abolishment of the University of North Dakota’s “Fighting Sioux” nickname and Indian-head logo. 

In fairness, it should be mentioned that the pathetic, politically-correct NCAA had threatened the university with sanctions if it didn’t comply. Really, though, not only would the sanctions not be that severe, whatever happened to the old American spirit of spending “millions for defense, not a penny for tribute”? Today we spend millions for social engineering, but I guess a penny of sacrifice in the sports arena is too much to ask.

Read the rest here.

Obama’s Race to the Bottom: Punish Schoolchildren by Racial Quota

By Selwyn Duke

Last year I wrote about a Tucson Unified School District social engineering plan that had the effect of meting out punishment based on racial quota. The school board had insisted, reported Arizona Republic’s Doug MacEachern, “that its schools reduce its suspensions and/or expulsions of minority students to the point that the data reflect ‘no ethnic/racial disparities.’” (It wasn’t reported whether the students cooperated and started committing infractions based on racial quota.) It’s the kind of thing that, though outrageous, you might expect from a fairly large city with a leftist government.

But now, with a big Windy City leftist in the White House, this plan is going national. As University of Illinois-Urbana Professor of Political Science-Emeritus Robert Weissberg writes:

Read the rest here.