Badass Women

A couple of announcements this week warmed my liberal heart. Two magazines each present a year-end award. While Sports Illustrated is hardly a magazine anymore (it was purchased a few times and is now owned by a company that is really only interested in the brand, and laid off most of the staff) it still awards a Sportsperson Of The Year. This year it went to Megan Rapinoe, star of the U.S. Women's Soccer Team. They won the World Cup, due to some of her contributions, but surely she received the award because of her activism.

It started when she took a knee during the National Anthem in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick. Then, when asked if she would visit the White House if the team won the Cup, she answered a most definitive no, throwing in a gerund involving the world "fuck." This managed to reach the Tweeter in Chief, who said she should win the Cup before spouting off. Well, she did win, and no she didn't go to the White House.

Rapinoe is an out and proud lesbian, and to me she signals a basic tectonic shift in  how athletes and other celebrities are viewed. No longer do queer people have to hide in the shadows. While the comments on the Facebook announcement of the award are both disheartening and simultaneously amusing ("she's no role model," or "she hates the country") there are many more people, who may be less likely to troll, that find her inspirational. I'm an old straight white guy and I find her inspirational. We need more people in sports like her.

Rapinoe and her teammates won Time Magazine's Athletes Of The Year, but the Person Of The Year went to teen climate activist Greta Thunberg. I've written about this amazing young woman before, but it's worth mentioning her winning this honor for the apoplexy its caused among the right. Of course Donald Trump was hoping he'd win (he has a fixation with it, as even before he was president he had fake Man Of The Year covers hanging on the walls of his properties--and he did win the damn thing in 2016). Trump's petty and mean response was that she should take anger management classes, watch a movie with some friends, and chill. Donald Jr., who shot a rare sheep in Mongolia but didn't get put into jail for it, was outraged, and all of the chattering classes on Fox just can't understand Thunberg.

She is a person who can't stand idly by while the planet is destroyed. If only the rest of us had a little bit of her resolve and determination. It's people like her, who started with no organization, that make the difference. If she can influence other people her age, maybe, just maybe, we can avoid catastrophe.

Thunberg is not political, and is not employed by the Deep State or manipulated by others. She is the real deal. After all, climate change and other environmental issues should not be political--they are matters of science. "Listen to the scientists" is her mantra. But if the science interferes with profits, than it is pilloried, mocked, or scoffed at. But she will not be silenced. Long may she speak, and thank you Time for acknowledging her.