Some Americans embarrassing themselves

I've got some questions that I hope will steer American media members to more thoughtful coverage of Eileen Gu, the Asian-American freestyle skier who's competing for China.

Fox News called the 18-year-old freestyle skier ungrateful, which is about what you’d expect.

It was a little more surprising that slate.com asked how “jerky” Eileen Gu was for choosing to compete for China in the Olympics instead of the United States, which is where she was born.

What Sports Illustrated wrote after Gu won a gold medal this week was downright puzzling. Mike Rosenberg spent half his article explaining why you shouldn’t view Gu’s decision as an endorsement of the Chinese government, and then — in the second half of the column — portrayed her as a willing pawn while seething at her refusal to answer questions about her citizenship. Somewhere along the way he also spit up a reference to believing “she genuinely feels Chinese.” Huh?

So the American press isn’t exactly distinguishing itself in the coverage of an admittedly complicated issue. So in today’s newsletter — being of generous and helpful spirit — I’m going to provide some thoughts and a few pointed questions in hopes of coaxing a little more thoughtful coverage from the ‘Mericans.

Let’s start with the easy one. That would be Fox News as Tucker Carlson brought in Will Cain for a segment earlier this week. The words of the two hosts are transcribed here verbatim.

Carlson: Eileen Gu is 18 years old. She’s a skier. She was born in San Francisco. She’s a favorite to several gold medals in the Winter Olympics in China this year, but she’s not going to be competing for the country of her birth or her citizenship. Instead, she’s going to be on China’s Olympic team. She has one parent who was born in China, and she switched sides despite the fact she’s American. What does this tell about the moment we’re living in, and our future.

First of all, shout-out to saying “she has one parent who was born in China” as if that is something negligible or a technicality. As for what it says about the moment we’re living in, well, I would say perhaps it shows identity is a fluid concept, impacted by a variety of factors. That’s just the set-up, though.