Tea at Trianon: The Real Winner: Second is the New First

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, March 20, 2022

The Real Winner: Second is the New First

From The Daily Wire:

The University of Virginia’s Emma Weyant was praised as the “real winner” after she came in second to biologically male transgender swimmer Lia Thomas in the NCAA Women’s Swimming Championship 500 yard freestyle on Thursday.
“Round of applause for Emma Weyant, the UVA swimmer who placed second in the 500y freestyle tonight, behind Lia Thomas,” Angela Morabito posted. “Second is the new first.”
“Congratulations to Emma Weyant for being the real winner of the woman’s 500,” Jake Shields wrote. (Read more.)

From The National Review:

Lia Thomas, the transgender woman whose record-threatening times on the University of Pennsylvania’s swim team made her a star of college athletics and a symbol of the debate over sports and gender identity, won an N.C.A.A. championship in the 500-yard freestyle on Thursday.
Thomas, a fifth-year senior who arrived for the swimming championships in Atlanta as the top seed in the 500 and 200 freestyle races, completed the race in 4 minutes, 33.24 seconds, more than a second ahead of the runner-up.

I would like to know who is fooled by this. My suspicion is that almost nobody is fooled by this, but that almost everybody is scared to admit that in public.

However “Lia Thomas” might self-identify, he has the body of a man. This matters, because he is competing in a women’s sports league, and because there are profound biological differences between men and women in that sport, as in almost every other. The Times reports that Thomas “left opponents far behind and put some collegiate records under new pressure.” Well, yeah. This is because Thomas is a man, and because Thomas’s “opponents” — two of whom were Olympians — are not. (Read more.)