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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   25743 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026

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This forum seems to be missing the biggest actual culture war battleground of the week: The US Hockey Gold Medal team.

For those who haven't heard, the US Men's Hockey Team won the gold medal over Canada, on an overtime goal by Jack Hughes. The team celebrated, the country celebrated, and everything was great, until it wasn't.

Kash Patel was part of the celebration, for some reason. Apparently he's a hockey fan, as I've read he was attending games when Ovechkin was nearing Gretzky's goal record. And then there was a call from Donald Trump to congratulate the team, where he made a joke ("I'll have to invite the women's team, too, or they'll impeach me.")

Of course, the usual suspects have come out of the woodwork to scold then men for being bros.

Jodi Walker called them losers.

The New York Times decided to praise the defector while shaming the victorious Americans.

Mary Clarke says that they failed to meet the cultural moment, and boy is she waging the culture war. Some highlights include reminding us that a black woman won a gold medal in hockey, bemoaning that the NHL is 44% Republican, decrying the hiring of someone accused of and found not guilty of sexual assault, implying his guilt.

Then, finally, she has the gall to say this:

That is what the lasting message of this hockey team should have been. Not laughing at jokes about their peers, not going mask off after the doors close, but a celebration of life, of joy and of a teammate that tragically passed away way too soon.

Well, Mary, you are responsible for writing the message of this team, and you are participating in making sure the message you dislike is the one that's getting spread.

For a reasonable take, I always go back to the characteristic machine:

this doesnt work because olympic athletes winning a gold medal for their country are, alike unto greek olympians of old, bedecked in sanctity and elevated above other men of their polis in their moment of triumph
not sure why @marycclarke cant see this as a sports writer

if theyd taken the opportunity to shit on the US that would have been another thing because they would have been fucking up the ritual! but they followed the old forms with aplomb and were imbued with the divine aura of champions
this is just basic civic ritual yk

And a quoted response

Haters always hate to see an mf in his aristeia. Always begrudging the requisite giving of kudos.

This really does cut to the core of it. There is a civic ritual, which we can all participate in. Civic in a way that crosses race and sex and religion, or should, at least. But not anymore. We are not allowed to have civic rituals unless they pay obeisance to the cult of multiculturalism, unless they celebrate black women and foreigners and anyone but straight white men.

ETA: Two more posts, more from the fans with substacks and less from the professional pundits:

Don't Let Them Fucking Take It From You

Fascists want us miserable. They want to destroy us in more ways than one, and one of those tactics is taking away all sources of joy from the oppressed. The MAGA movement descends upon this sport like an invasive species of mold, demanding we uproot ourselves and claiming hockey as theirs. Don’t f*cking let them. Don’t let them take away the game you love. Because if we give up, if we all leave, if we forsake what we hold dear, then they have won.

The Sports Exile

It’s been terrible to watch patriotism and sports alike both claimed and weaponized by the right. Pride in one’s nation shouldn’t inherently be tied to one political movement and in my mind there is no greater form of love than self improvement. It shouldn’t sound like wide eyed high school senior idealism to want better for everyone.

This second one really pissed me off, and this quote in particular. Patriotism was abandoned by the left, not weaponized by the right. You left (pun intended). As evidenced by a later paragraph:

When Quinn Hughes is shouting out the troops and Auston Matthews is saying he’s proud to be an American, there is no more pretending about who these men are and what they stand for. The answer, in short, is nothing but themselves and their boys.

"I'm proud to be an American" "Wow, why do you only care about yourself, why don't you care about me?"

They reveal themselves as unamerican at every opportunity.

Report from the womenfolk:

I am reliably informed that the women who are upset about the men's hockey team are FAKE FANS who only care about hockey because Heated Rivalry made them think hockey was GAY, unlike the REAL FANS who have been big into hockey for several years, ever since they discovered a large and expansive sub-genre of HUNKY HOCKEY HETEROSEXUAL ROMANCE NOVELS.

I am also delighted and confused to report that Jack Hughes is apparently my future son-in-law. The delight should be obvious (free NHL tickets, at least some of which will be for the Flyers), but the confusion stems from my prior understanding that my son-to-be was instead Cooper Dejean. When I confronted my daughter on this discrepancy and/or betrayal she hemmed and hawed in anguish for a minute, then decided that Cooper was the superior husbando because he has all of his teeth.

You can literally win eternal Olympic glory and teenage girls will still give you shit because you took a hit. It's rough out there. Stay frosty, fellas.

This one doesn't really feel like a "Culture War" to me in that: there's nothing to fight about. Based on what I can glean online the outrage is about the following points:

  • How dare Kash Patel party in Italy and how dare the US Hockey Team party with him
  • How dare the US Hockey Team accept an invitation to the White House and pose for pictures with President Trump

At least the first point contains some accusation of some kind of moral line being crossed. But the vast majority of the outrage is merely that Trump is involved at all, often laced with accusations that he's a rapist pedophile creep etc. But there can't really be a culture war on this point, there's nothing to do. You can't cancel the sitting president. They can't even try. And nobody can really cancel a gold-winning US Olympic Team either. So the vast majority of discussion of this issue seems to me to be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Nothing else is going on. An American team won Gold at the Olympics, then did not act as if they had TDS, and now a lot who do have TDS are mad. What's there to argue about?

Who paid for the director of the FBI to travel to another country to hang out in the locker room with the USA men's hockey team? Was it me, the taxpayer? Or was it Kash Patel?

Stuff like that is a rock and a hard place, though. If no mention was made, people would be complaining that the administration couldn't even celebrate Historic Victory For Our Sport.

We get it in Ireland, too. Agreed that a lot of politicians just like to jump on the bandwagon of a feel-good moment for publicity, but if this is the least thing they are wasting our money on, we should be glad. At least Patel seems to have a genuine interest in hockey, there have been some cringe moments where Minister Whosis who you can tell never kicked a ball in his life fakes being a massive fan of the team, Go Our Boys In Green! for the PR opportunity.

This line of argument is about as played out now as the bean-counting every 4 years about how much the President plays golf. We created a society where the most powerful politicians and officials in America are celebrities, then we complain when they have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on security details when they go out for lunch. It's fine, really, it's not even top five most egregious waste of taxpayer dollars spent on US government employees this week.

I suspect he was there for professional reasons, and the thirty second photo op of him smashing PBRs with the boys was the cover. I believe he has coached high school hockey teams.

There is professional reasons and 'professional reasons'.

Realistically, securing the American Olympians would not have involved the FBI, much less the head of the FBI. Unless there was a terror attack planned or something. Even then, the idea that the director of the FBI himself visits the Olympics under the cover of being a tourist to foil some evil terrorist plot seems like a QAnon-level conspiracy.

The way I see it, it used to be that the head of a a federal law enforcement agency would try to seem neutral. Probably FBI directors have visited the Olympics in the past in their own time, but few will have leveraged their position to party directly with the Olympians.

It is just one of the perks of working for Trump. I mean, sure, you have to take your cues from the administration regarding whom to investigate and whom not to investigate, but nobody will bat an eye if you use your position for your own goals. Given the general baseline of the Trump administration, 'got invited for partying because he was the director of the FBI' does not even register. He would have to leak classified intel to narcos or something before anyone would claim that he is worse than the median.

Realistically, securing the American Olympians would not have involved the FBI...

This, at least, has not historically been true, and has not been true for nearly thirty years; the Centennial Park bombing means that the FBI has treated every Olympics as a hotspot that requires pre-event and during-event oversight. ((There's actually a pretty long list of things that fall into this category.))

That's separate from the question of whether Patel, specifically, needed to be or should have been anywhere near it, or having been there, whether it was necessary or appropriate to also gladhand the people his organization was supposedly protecting.

As usual you aren't hating the media enough - this was a pre-planned official trip to discuss security arrangements where he was going to pay the extra costs (at least that's what 2Way reported).

FBI directors are required to fly in a FBI jet and disallowed private air travel. Such was asserted by a radio news program recently.

As much as I don’t like the Olympics, I think at some point the point of a game is to have fun. For most normies, it’s basically escapism. You watch or play sports to escape from life for a while. And I think much like all other entertainment they should not be made into something other than entertainment. People can enjoy things without having political views shoved in.

It's clearly taking up air from the real scandal of Olympic hockey in 2026, meaning two Canadian refs being allowed to be refs for the Canada-Finland semifinal.

bemoaning that the NHL is 44% Republican

Reminds me of that ad about female homelessness ("1 in 4 homeless are women" — presumably the others are sexless automatons). Here, there's a good chance some of them are unregistered so it's not going to be 56:44 D:R split, but still. A very strong message of "you aren't allowed to have anything of your own" (or step 3 of the "you do not fit in here" cycle).

It’s been terrible to watch patriotism and sports alike both claimed and weaponized by the right. Pride in one’s nation shouldn’t inherently be tied to one political movement

Astounding that this is said so unironically after all the efforts to move sports under the rainbow flag, e.g. the Football is Gay campaign, the recent brouhaha over the superbowl, the Last Supper in Drag at the Paris Olympics, ....

I guess normies correctly assume that a woman has to be a severely wretched creature in one way or another in order to become homeless due to society according them innate biological value. After all, a woman can normally avoid homelessness by, I dunno, just sucking cocks or something.

Reminds me of that ad about female homelessness ("1 in 4 homeless are women" — presumably the others are sexless automatons).

I mean, yes, to the target audience of such an ad, very likely, that other 3 in 4 are indeed quite sexless and barely count as automatons, if that.

Reminds me of that ad about female homelessness ("1 in 4 homeless are women" — presumably the others are sexless automatons)

Yeah, although I think the real issue is that liberals can sense that professional hockey players are -- generally speaking -- red tribe. And yeah, fundamentally they feel threatened by ANY institution which hasn't been captured by the Left.

the Football is Gay campaign

Is this why the /r/nfl banner has been that hideous tranny flag for months?

I checked, it looks like they changed it for Black History Month to some sort of pan-african colors.

According to a post below, only about 5% are democrats. But that really ought not be a problem if Dems would say defend college political affiliation.

Wait, that was the misogynistic joke? That’s it? I’m not sure how that’s supposed to be offensive or sexist to anyone.

To quote the video (in the video Trump says this in a joking way, breaking into a chuckle as he mentions the women's team):

President Trump: We'll do it at the White House... we'll just have some fun, we have medals for you guys. And we have to, I must tell you, we're going to have to bring the women's team, you do know that?

United States men's hockey team: [Laughter and cheers]

Trump: I do believe I probably would be impeached, okay?

Team: [More laughter]

To steelman:

  • The joke implicitly undermines the idea that women's sports is equal to men's sports - and they're instead a kind of annoying dysfunctional burden parasiting on the men's team's success ("sorry Timmy, but you have to bring your little brother along!")
  • They were engaging positively with Trump and Kash, who are both Republicans, and who likely (certainly in Trump's case) hold anti-feminist views. So the team was normalising them, and Republicans in general, in the hockey fandom ("if there's one Nazi at a table of 10 people, it's table of 10 Nazis", "neutrality in the face of oppression", etc)
  • The whole video shows the locker room dynamic for this team is very "bro"ish, so this kind of attitude will discourage some marginal women from going into hockey.

I get that you see nothing wrong with it (and I think it is fine too), but that is why some people (like Clarke) find it offensive - and there is an actual conflict between worldviews here, the feminists aren't just mistaken.

the idea that women's sports is equal to men's sports

is a ridiculous idea. It's like pretending that children's sports is equal to young adults', or that local leagues are equal to world championships. Obviously false, and everyone knows it. Is it really necessary to pretend otherwise?

I'd go further and say that women's sports are often better than men's sports because they can be more fun to watch. No pretending required: I sincerely don't care if the men could beat the women any more than I care that gorillas are stronger than weightlifters. When it comes to sports I'm exclusively interested in whether they are entertaining.

Fair, but it seems to me that women's sports are fun to watch for reasons different from those for which men's sport is watched.

Well it's a mixture. Women's tennis often has more varied and exciting rallies because it's less serve dominated, for example, and see 07mk's view on ultimate frisbee.

Well it's a mixture. Women's tennis often has more varied and exciting rallies because it's less serve dominated, for example, and see 07mk's view on ultimate frisbee.

That was definitely true during my youth, but I don't think it was true during the Big 3.5 era. The last classic serve-volley player was Tim Henman (who is only considered good because of the total dearth of British tennis talent before he started making semi-finals) and the last classic serve-volley player who actually won things was Sampras. I would say the last great male player whose main weapon was his serve was Roddick.

They made the grass at Wimbledon slower in 2001 to produce a less serve-dominated game, and it worked.

As somebody who mostly watches Tennis from the POV of a bookmaker I do kinda prefer Women's tennis having more of a Calvinball quality to it.

Yes there's less ridiculous Giraffe servebots than you'd expect but also breaking service is considerably more important for male success even if the Opelkas didn't inherit the earth

This is how I feel about high level ultimate Frisbee. The nature of the sport is that good offense beats good defense, and the men at the top levels are so good that many games have only a handful of turnovers and even fewer breaks (on the order of 5-10 in a game where sum total score is usually around 20-30), which can make it rather boring to watch. "Oh, offense scored again on a full field throw, yawn."

Women at the top levels, are so much worse than the men in not just strength and speed but also finesse and technique, that their games end up having lots more messy points with lots of turnovers, which raises the overall excitement level. Even at the top levels, not many women can throw full field, whereas basically the weakest man in a top team could do it regularly. But I find the women more fun to watch because of that volatility.

Unfortunately, women's ultimate is also less mature than men's, so there are fewer truly elite teams, which means fewer competitive games due to more and greater disparity in team quality.

What are you actually trying to claim here? "Children's sports are not literally the same as young adults'" is a very different claim than "women's sports matter, and should matter, as little as children's sports compared to men's".

Personally, I believe that humans reaching the height of what their bodies can perform does deserve celebration. In that, women's sports are equal to men's sports because exceptional women are still exceptional. Local leagues and children's leagues are transitional, at least in theory, and that's why they are not the same as women's leagues.

Should I have a daughter, my fatherly advice to her will not include "even if you become the best of all women in X, this won't matter in the slightest because male boys are still going to be better than you" or whatever argument against female sports is common those days. You're welcome to tell your daughters otherwise, of course.

Should you have a daughter you would do her a disservice to imply anything other than women's sports are not the same as men's sports. They are unequal(biologically), and that's fine.

I believe that humans reaching the height of what their bodies can perform does deserve celebration

As stated, this is a fine and consistent view (professional sports is ultimately about entertaining the fans, so it is up to the fans to decide what is entertaining), and the standard one I hear in defence of women's sports.

But do you actually believe this as stated? If we look at Olympic medalists in the men's 100m sprint, all 33 of the Gold/Silver/Bronzes since 1984 have been Black (the closest exception being Marcell Jacobs, who is Black x White) And looking even further, the remainder have been White.

If the committee were to split the 100m into a Black, White, and Other Race category (with the Black category in practice being the open category, and the White category open to any non-Black), would you consider a winner worthy of celebration? It is still true that an exceptional (amongst non-(Black/White)s) runner is exceptional.

And even more generally - many people's physical peaks will vary based on genetics (but in ways that don't count as an actual disability, e.g. a healthy man who cannot put on muscle very well) - would you also consider them reaching their respective peaks as not only worthy of celebration (I'm happy with celebrating it) but of deserving a special segregated category (that is treated as equal to the open category) with its own parallel medals?

I'm guessing that you don't (certainly, this is an unpopular view amongst women's sports defenders as a whole) - so I'm not sure how to defend women's sports (and disabled sports) without somehow privileging the genetic shortcoming (vis-a-vis physical sports) of XX chromosomes (and the various genetic defects that count as medical disabilities) over any other kind of shortcoming.

And I don't think it is a bad thing to privilege XX-having (women really are special in the big picture of society) - but I don't think it makes sense in the generalised abstract "everyone should be celebrated for reaching their full potential" way you seem to be gesturing towards.

I do privilege the XX-having as a segregated category.

I'll try to explain with an example. Suppose the human species is split into two fantasy races - one is 9ft tall on average, and the other 3ft tall (with all the commeasurate differences in peak ability). Assuming that we've found an equilibrium in society in most things, rather than fighting forever fantasy race wars or a genocide/utter subjugation of one by the other, it makes perfect sense to me that we would have a 9-footer league in sports and a 3-footer league, and the 3-footer league would be treated as "real sports", rather than being dismissed by all of society as insignificant simply because 9-footers can run sprints thrice as fast.

Now, if you look at sports cynically, then genes determine what your peak is, genes determine how tenacious you are, parents and infrastructure determine how much you're railroaded into professional sports, and political lobbying determines what kind of supplements are considered legitimate as opposed to doping.

Once you choose to not look at sports cynically, then splitting the Real Sports into two leagues based on two groups, where:

  • each comprises half of humanity,
  • each is necessary to perpetuate society and
  • each is represented in any smaller subdivision of community, down to family units

appears to be both a minimal subdivision and a necessary one, if one is to promote general admiration for one's physical form in society. Things such as black people being slightly more represented among peak runners or white people being slightly more represented among peak [stereotypically white-dominating sport] do not appear to warrant further splitting.

I'm claiming that men's sports and women's sports are not "equal". Not that the latter "doesn't matter in the slightest".

I tell my daughter to to as many sports as she likes, to any level she can achieve, and the more she does the better. I don't tell her that regardless of her actual abilities, her performance and/or the interest of spectators will be in any sense "equal" to that of any given others.

When your constitution says "all people shall be equal before the law", do you feel compelled to say "but they're not, why must we pretend otherwise"?

But we should not take part in acting a lie any more than in telling a lie. We should not say that men are equal where they are not equal, nor proceed upon the assumption that there is an equality where it does not exist; but we should strive to bring about a measurable equality, at least to the extent of preventing the inequality which is due to force or fraud. Abraham Lincoln, a man of the plain people, blood of their blood, and bone of their bone, who all his life toiled and wrought and suffered for them, at the end died for them, who always strove to represent them, who would never tell an untruth to or for them, spoke of the doctrine of equality with his usual mixture of idealism and sound common sense. He said (I omit what was of merely local significance):

"I think the authors of the Declaration of Independence intended to include all men, but they did not mean to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all men were equal in color, size, intellect, moral development or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what they did consider all men created equal-equal in certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. This they said, and this they meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were actually enjoying that equality, or yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar to all - constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and, even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people, everywhere."

We are bound in honor to refuse to listen to those men who would make us desist from the effort to do away with the inequality which means injustice; the inequality of right, opportunity, of privilege. We are bound in honor to strive to bring ever nearer the day when, as far is humanly possible, we shall be able to realize the ideal that each man shall have an equal opportunity to show the stuff that is in him by the way in which he renders service. There should, so far as possible, be equal of opportunity to render service; but just so long as there is inequality of service there should and must be inequality of reward. We may be sorry for the general, the painter, the artists, the worker in any profession or of any kind, whose misfortune rather than whose fault it is that he does his work ill. But the reward must go to the man who does his work well; for any other course is to create a new kind of privilege, the privilege of folly and weakness; and special privilege is injustice, whatever form it takes.

To say that the thriftless, the lazy, the vicious, the incapable, ought to have reward given to those who are far-sighted, capable, and upright, is to say what is not true and cannot be true. Let us try to level up, but let us beware of the evil of leveling down.

  • Teddy Roosevelt, in his famous "Man in the Arena" speech (AKA "Citizenship in a Republic".

The Constitution says "all people are equal before the law." Everyone knows that this is an aspiration, and that in reality, rich people, people with good lawyers, people who are in favor, have an easier time in any interaction with the law than people who are not.

You seem to be objecting to the idea that we should just make that tacit understanding explicit, and fair enough - poor people are supposed to be equal to rich people before the law, and it would be wrong to say "C'mon, we all know that's not how it works" and just accept the legal system dropping all pretense of fairness. We should at least try to uphold a sense of fairness.

On the other hand, it would be doing someone who's at a severe disadvantage a grave injustice to let them walk into a legal battle thinking that they actually are not at a disadvantage just because in some ideal world, they shouldn't be.

This is where it seems your argument regarding women's sports lies. You are, as other people are wont to say, trying to substitute a should for an is. People (feminists and female sports defenders, anyway) would really, really like for women to be physically equal to men, as athletically impressive as men, and for women's sports to be as exciting and admirable as men's sports.

But they're not. They're just not. And this isn't even society failing to living up to an ideal: it's biology! (I have actually met people--men and women--who die on the hill of "male-female differences are actually minimal if not nonexistent" and those people have never done martial arts or full contact sports with girls, or with boys if they are girls.) Women cannot compete with men. No, I don't care about your niche ultra-marathons or long-distance swimming or winter shooting events or whatever (where it usually turns out men actually outperform there too if you actually look at the numbers, just not by as large a margin).

Of course that doesn't mean you should tell your daughter that her athletic accomplishments are meaningless because "men will always be stronger and faster"! Of course that doesn't mean women shouldn't do sports and be celebrated for excelling in them! But- you are doing them a disservice to let them believe that because they are really good at women's sports, they can compete with men. Or that any disparity in results (and in accolades and awards) is because of sexism and not, well, biology. And that's where a lot of folks are now-- they somehow convince themselves that because women and men are morally equal, that women's and men's sports should be physically (and thus, monetarily) equal. And that if WNBA players don't make as much money as NBA players it's because of sexism, and if people cheer more for the men's hockey team than the women's hockey team it's because of sexism. And not because, well, sorry, but unless you're the father of a girl athlete (or a lesbian), you probably just don't find female sports all that interesting to watch compared to the peak performance male version.

Now, a more gracious president would have invited both the men's and women's USA hockey teams to the White House and done a nice coed photo-op and celebrated them together, and we'd all have pretended that yes, they are totally equally deserving and we celebrate them equally. Trump is not a gracious president. But then, the response from the same people who've been insisting we pretend that men and women are equal has also been exceedingly ungracious. The men's hockey team are "losers" because... the wrong people are cheering for them. And because (if we're being real) that iconic picture of a guy with a bloody mouth and a tooth knocked out, smiling in victory, is a big in-your-face reminder of the difference between male and female athleticism and what we valorize. Which makes certain people Very Uncomfortable.

Going back to your point, this whole pretense that men and women can (should) be physically equal is actively dangerous in the realm of self-defense, where too many women have been raised on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Black Widow in the MCU and the like, and really believe their tae kwon do black belts mean they could take on a grown man who seriously means to do them harm.

In that context, yes, you should absolutely tell your daughters: "I love your enthusiasm, I celebrate your victories, I encourage your efforts- but you should never believe you are equal to a man."

I did not claim women could be physically on par with men (though I wouldn't mind if they were in the future, through transhumanust efforts). If I thought they were, I would be advocating for them to enter the free-for-all league, not for the dignity of their own league.

I even used an analogy where the leagues are even more different in peak ability than men and women are to drive my point.

"All people are equal before the law" is a declaration of intent, not a statement of biological fact. And equality before the law has nothing whatsoever to do with individual judgments on what sorts of athletes should receive what level of social acclaim. No one is trying to arrest the women's olympic team for the crime of sporting while female.

No one is trying to arrest the women's olympic team for the crime of sporting while female.

Sure, but they will get arrested for excluding men who claim to be women, or at least punched really hard by an example of the same.

Honestly, yes. I think we're well past some nebulous "equality" being a useful social fiction, and well into it having become the object of a socially debilitating cult.

When "equality before the law" meant "there are no longer hereditary aristocrats for whom a separete code of laws applies", it was useful. When it is taken to mean "the legislature is not to distinguish between races, genders or religions", then at least that's actionable. But when "the law" is a ten-million-pages nightmare of exceptions, intentional and accidental loopholes, carveouts, special interests, favored and disfavored groups, discretionary budgets and authorities wielded in suspiciously un-equal ways, and a wide array of impossible impositions on an uncooperative reality, then good riddance. The fiction is entirely at odds with the facts.

I know it's a very important word to many people, but yes, absolutely, when someone tells me that different people are equal, then I feel very strongly compelled to ask "IN WHAT SENSE?".

I kinda do.

Is it really necessary to pretend otherwise?

Yes, actually; if they get taken seriously maybe more [women] will show up to compete, which has downstream positive social effects in the long term. More value for people who Do The Thing means the population at large is more interested in Doing The Thing and sends a message we value Those Who Show Up. To the extent you want women to Show Up, this is important.

That said, if [women as class = feminists] take it for granted and start attacking men because of it- that they're not being honored above and beyond because they didn't realize- or that their mothers (including public surrogates like teachers) failed to impress upon them- that the entire reason they have this league is already the 'above and beyond'?
Then it's OK for men not want to continue that pretense, to not be interested in making the space for them, and more accepting of reminding them more frequently that the deal/concession didn't need to exist.

Which is a shame, because again, to even be a female athlete in these competitions means you have certain qualities that it would honestly be a waste not to hold up as an example, so as always it's the worthy who suffer here.

I can't quite tell if this comment is serious or not, but, taken on its face its a bunch of "ifs" based on a lot of assumptions that obviously are not in evidence.

Yes, actually; if they get taken seriously maybe more [women] will show up to compete, which has downstream positive social effects in the long term.

That's a load-bearing "maybe" you have there. The same/similar arguments have been made about all sorts of things with poor female representation like STEM and video games. Tons of money and effort have been poured into these outreach efforts (and a lot of outright discrimination against men too) with nothing much to show for it.

Wake me up when an outreach program for more female coal miners gets some serious attention from the mainstream media.

Wake me up when an outreach program for more female coal miners gets some serious attention from the mainstream media.

You mean about getting women back to the mines, after the 19th century campaigns to get them out of those?

In 1841, 2,350 women were employed in UK coal mines – in a variety of roles. Although women are often thought to have only worked at the surface of mines, women did in fact often hold roles that required them to work underground, before this became illegal in 1842. In 1842, the Coal Mines Act banned females of any age from working underground and required boys who worked underground, to be no younger than ten years old. This law was in response to an inquiry, which was ordered by Queen Victoria.

Queen Victoria ordered the inquiry after an accident at the Huskar Colliery in Barnsley, in 1838. After violent thunderstorms, a stream overflowed into the mines ventilation system and caused the death of 26 children – some as young as 8 years old.

...Women were not allowed to work underground in mines until the Employment Act of 1989 replaced sections of the Coals Mines Act 1842 and the Mines and the Quarries Act of 1954 (which also prohibited this type of work for women). 150 years after their ban, women were once again allowed to work underground.

The hope of labour reformers such as Robert Bald was that by freeing women and children from the pits, coal mining families would experience an improvement in living conditions. Having all the family members employed in the pit meant that there was no time for domestic work, which was a full time job in this period before labour saving devices. Bald hoped that women being at home would therefore improve the quality and cleanliness of home life.

Eventually in 1842 the Mines and Collieries Bill was passed by Parliament. This banned underground work for women and girls as well as boys under ten. However, many women still needed to earn a wage and consequently women took work on the pit surface instead. Nonetheless, the act benefitted children who were now able to go to school and stopped women from doing more physically dangerous work in the pits. However, the Act today is viewed with mixed opinion as there is also an argument that it may have resulted in forcing women into lower paid and less structured forms of employment.

That's a load-bearing "maybe" you have there

Maybe.

and a lot of outright discrimination against men

Then maybe just, like, don't do that? We can talk about whether the structures allowing/encouraging female participation enable corruption inherently- and indeed, some of them clearly have (academia in particular); but if your answer is "they all do and this is an intractable problem so huge it should never be done", then the natural next question is "then why should men be exempt from this in the organizations that solely permit them/to what degree should they be exempt/what happens when they exceed that exemption"[0]?

That isn't to say that it isn't time to move on from the current system- indeed, it can no longer serve its primary function, and its time has come.

with nothing much to show for it.

Do you even know what the ultimate objective of these representation programs even were? It wasn't "give privileges to the unworthy and reintroduce 19th-century sexism from the other direction", it's specifically "make sure the worthy do not give up". The tenor of society at the time this issue started to be raised was that this was a somewhat-undue burden on worthy women, so that's how the chips fell.

The liberal experiment has... I hesitate to say "failed", but more that it has run its course and now needs reform, because it in large part stopped being about this and started about being a sociofinancial hand-out to the corrupt and worthless. You can see this in the way progressives argue for men in women's sports- the entire point was to encourage worthy women, not to let [the Establishment] make it all about their political power instead.[1]

The problem with the "experiment" is both that it didn't count on corruption (and you can expect liberals to ignore that angle), and related to that, that it is ultimately incapable of yielding tangible/measurable results. We know that we can't turn a woman into a man[2], but both understand dignity in more or less the same ways, and that's what we're buying for the extra cash. In the end, it doesn't actually matter what the record is (re: Goodhart); but we can encourage the process.

Again, the objective wasn't really even to increase female representation: the problem was to ensure that women who should be participating are not discouraged by the lack of prior participation (or the logic believing in [0] demands). And it did succeed in this, perhaps a bit too well.

[0] Of course, in traditionalism the answer to that question is an axiomatic "because men are better", but this comes with certain other problems that traditionalists have had the last 100 years to answer for. It appears they may have dropped the ball somewhat.

[1] Though I will note that this was all about the liberal Establishment's political power when they set this up; encouraging worthy women was a demonstration and advancement of their political power. This is why progressives call themselves liberals.

[2] And the fact that people are actually trying to do this is perhaps the biggest indicator that the devotion to the measure ate the expected outcome. (That's not all it indicates, but it has something to do with it.)

Yes, it really is necessary to pretend otherwise, because if women aren't the same as men, then you might say they shouldn't be doing the things men do (vote, govern, jury).

Why is that necessary to avoid?

Because we don't want women to engage in political violence any more than we want men to do so, and we stand on much firmer ground in condemning such if women have the same avenues to pursue peaceable change.

This presupposes a lot. Negating those presuppositions, one might as well suggest retvrning to the tried and true historical norm of excluding women from politics full stop. Their capacity for violence is so low as to be a non-issue, and there isn't much to condemn.

Arguing from the capacity for political violence gives massively more leverage to men than to women.

Their capacity for violence is so low as to be a non-issue

Judging by the BLM riots their capacity for violence by proxy is very high indeed.

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Their capacity for violence is so low as to be a non-issue

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffragette_bombing_and_arson_campaign

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A majority of men will find that a rule that excludes all women from voting, governing and performing on jury based on some objective measure of competence will also exclude them. This is usually considered a bad thing by those who support universal male suffrage.

Of course it is not "necessary" to measure the competence objectively when one can rely on such time-tested proxies as "has a penis", "white" or "possesses as much property or more than the person currently arguing in favor of restricting the suffrage", but you get the idea.

A majority of men will find that a rule that excludes all women from voting, governing and performing on jury based on some objective measure of competence will also exclude them. This is usually considered a bad thing by those who support universal male suffrage.

In the Anglosphere, very much this. No Anglosphere country had universal male suffrage. (The UK gave women the vote at the same time as non-landowning men in rural constituencies, the US and the Dominions all gave women the vote before men from disfavoured racial groups). The principle that there is a right to vote implies that the right extends to women.

In countries whose democratic tradition stems from the French revolution, universal male suffrage explicitly tied to universal male conscription was the default.

The joke implicitly undermines the idea that women's sports is equal to men's sports - and they're instead a kind of annoying dysfunctional burden parasiting on the men's team's success ("sorry Timmy, but you have to bring your little brother along!")

Yeah, I heard it and kind of groaned. Did we really need to do that when we could have been bragging about beating Canada twice?

The joke about "if I don't invite them I'll be pilloried for being sexist" is probably correct that he would be pilloried for not inviting the women. I see that they too are gold medal winners, so fair enough, they too should be invited. Though now apparently they're not going to show up.

I see this point, but it's also true that the women's team has expressed far more political animosity for Trump than the men's team. "I have to invite them [too], even though they hate me [and won't show up]" was my first line of thought there, but I'll admit your reading is reasonable as well.

They were engaging positively with Trump and Kash, who are both Republicans, and who likely (certainly in Trump's case) hold anti-feminist views. So the team was normalising them, and Republicans in general, in the hockey fandom ("if there's one Nazi at a table of 10 people, it's table of 10 Nazis", "neutrality in the face of oppression", etc)

Your steelman is already rusting; objecting to the men's team dealing with Republican public officials is deep into who/whom.

It implies there's some reason Trump, and the men, wouldn't want the women's team to be invited.

This one seems to represent a nexus of like a dozen different CW issues at once.

  1. U.S. vs. Canada (its a repeat of the rivalry from last year, but the stakes still felt higher).

  2. Men vs. Women.

  3. Making Trump look good as President/on the world stage.

  4. Racial issues since its an all white team. Diversity isn't quite our strength.

  5. Most of the team are basically Chuds, ranging from open support of Trump to at least tacit approval of his administration.

  6. The above is bursting the fantasy bubble created by that popular book/TV series.

  7. This leading to some angry screeching from women who became hockey fans recently because they they thought they'd found some heckin' wholesome queer ally pro athletes to lust over.

  8. Pride in America as a country vis a vis superior athletic performance (seeing the same issue popping up with Alysa Liu).

  9. An extremely photogenic depiction of non-toxic masculinity. Guy takes a stick to the face, breaks a tooth, is bleeding profusely, but swallows the pain (or some vicodin, not sure), gets back out there to support his team, and wins the whole thing for them.

  10. From the pure sports perspective, this display has also drawn some favorable comparisons versus the rather abysmal Super Bowl this year, and the ongoing problem with 'tanking' in the NBA. Compare the all-out pell mell effort personified above to current NBA stars lazily collecting million dollar paychecks.

  11. And of course the wonderful timing, putting this right around the SOTU.

I bet I could spot a few more with some thought.

But the thing I'm loving is that the scolds who are upset about ANY of this are clearly losing completely and utterly.

And let me say again. I don't want to share a country with these people.

If you can't even drop the political labels for a day or two to celebrate along with your countrymen when they succeed in an 'underdog' victory (not quite the Miracle on Ice, but still, this was a GREAT game), then I question whether you're really part of this nation in any real sense. If you remained silent on the matter I can understand. Not everyone has to get swept up in celebration.

If you take a 5 second snippet of video that may or may not even depict an 'offensive' joke to women (that was based on some very biased, inaccurate reporting) and use that to ATTACK AND DEMAND APOLOGIES from your victorious countrymen I think you are genuinely mentally unwell and I would prefer you not have a say in how my nation is governed, insofar as you're clearly not really hoping for the best outcomes for said country.

I'm old enough to remember when Michael Phelps was a megaceleb for his performance in the '08 Olympics. The biggest controversy to erupt there was him caught on camera smoking weed.

Patriotic jingoism was perfectly allowed. There was no gender issues to speak of, and it was only natural for Phelps to accept Obama's invite to the White House. Nobody scored political 'points' off of it (well, it was used in pro-weed propaganda).

If the point of the Olympics is to give countries a way to engage in friendly non-military rivalry and to secure bragging rights while showcasing the highest levels of Athletic performance, then you HAVE to minimize the imposition of your home country's political divisions on the events, and let victorious countries celebrate and even gloat (a bit) and the defeated ones mourn and vow to come back stronger next time.

I'm sick of having to tiptoe around eggshell sensibilities about when you can and can't be 'proud' of your country, especially by the same people who celebrate displays of pride by every country but their own.

I'm sick of hearing a chorus of female screeching that arises whenever there's a story that is mildly upsetting to women even if it is wildly empowering for men. I'm sick of their complaints being taken as facially valid and used to extract concessions from people who have done nothing wrong. And the apparent inability of our political class to tell them to just shut up.

Just. LEAVE.

the same people who celebrate displays of pride by every country but their own.

Nothing new under the sun....

I'd throw in an extra controversy: the United States government paying for Kash Patel to do a whole lot of things that seem to have nothing to do with his job. The trip to Italy probably cost about $75k, this on top of the security detail for his girlfriend.

I do think there's quite a bit to critique Kash on, but if he was on the scene, I'm not gonna bregrudge him a personal chance to bro it up with some hockey players, even if it makes him look (more) unprofessional.

He can't really make my respect for the FBI get any lower.

But then you know, get back to fakkin work.

I don't think it would have done much damage if Patel didn't already have a reputation for junketing. In a world where he already has such a reputation, it turns an insider gossip story into something that is legible to normies.

Liberal sports fans :: Conservative music, lit, and film fans

Both need to ignore the politics of the people they are fans of, or pretend that their politics are secretly better, if they want to be fans.

Uh, you can find conservative writers and musicians pretty easily. The appreciation guild just tilts left.

You can't participate in literarature or music culture as a conservative without holding your nose at the politics of people involved. You can ghettoize yourself into country music and a circle of conservative authors, but you can't even read the important authors of fity or seventy-five years ago without dealing in a great many socialists and libtards. Yes, you can read the dimes square guys and listen to Morgan Wallen, but you can't read the authors and musicians whose style they're riffing on and influenced by without dealing with artists with politics you'd find disgusting.

Similarly, a liberal can ghettoize themselves into certain niche sports or women's sports and be assured that they would find the athletes to be Good People, but they can't just watch a normal big-5 team without knowing there are a lot of Jesus freaks (or worse as the case may be) on the team.

Music and film, sure, but libs also have to do a lot of nose-holding (or, more often, misrepresenting/ignoring the politics of historical greats) to read literature, poetry, and philosophy. Three out of the five greatest Modernist poets were avowed fascists, for instance. Cormac McCarthy subscribed to neo-Nazi publications, DFW wrote a hagiography of John McCain back when McCain was one of the Evil Fascists, you go further back and you have figures like Updike, Wolfe, etc. Europe is a little different because you have so many great Jewish novelists, who were understandably sensitive about the hard right, but you also have plenty of Problematic figures like Junger. Literary culture is way out to the left because, like other culture industries, you can come in, pack it with your friends, chuck out all the dissidents, and rewrite history (and this certainly didn't start with 'wokeness', it started with capital-C Communists), but great literature is certainly well-balanced between left and right.

Cormac McCarthy subscribed to neo-Nazi publications

Comac McCarthy also included a positively-depicted transsexual in his penultimate book. Checkmate!

In seriousness though, what neo-Nazi publications?

I misspoke slightly, far-right anti-semitic stuff but not neo-Nazi. https://slate.com/culture/2023/06/cormac-mccarthy-dead-garbage-el-paso-texas.html.

Which he threw into the trash.

Truly, the man is Adolf Hitler.

I'd also like to know.

Cormac McCarthy DEAD DFW DEAD Updike DEAD Wolfe DEAD Junger DEAD

This is like saying that the US Olympic team has always been left coded because they gave the Black Power salute on the podium in Mexico City.

I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to get at with this whole line of argument, so I may be speaking past you, but yeah that's how literature works you're mostly reading dead guys, i.e. "the authors and musicians whose style they're riffing on and influenced by". There just really aren't a lot of great living novelists (my three would be Krasznahorkai (hates post-Soviet consumerism, hates Russia), Knausgaard (not conventionally political but says things unacceptable to the left), and Houellebecq (self-explanatory)). I guess Pynchon and Delillo (boomerlibs) are still alive, but have not written meaningful work in a long time. For literary culture, which is not the same as literature, the institutions are gigalib but we're also an a hundred flowers moment of right-coded spaces and presses. And that's fine. One of the eternal truths of counterculture is that the people with all the money rarely throw the best parties or write the best books.

Basically, to return to the Olympics stuff, if you are determined to be a fan of the US Olympic team wherever and whenever, you have to accept both the black power salutes and the photo-ops with Trump. The same thing with literature. There isn't any qualitative, and no major quantitative difference in the level of nose-holding conservatives and liberals have to do with literature. The main difference that appears from the outside is that, where possible, liberals downplay the conservativeness of writers they can claim as their own or apolitical, and only exile the real Celine types where you can't hide it, whereas conservatives who read admit they're often reading libs and discussing books with libs.

Ok, but current literary authors people actually read seem about evenly split right/left- it’s just that lefty authors get more accolades.

I'm not talking about fans so much as I'm talking about pundits.

Liberal Sports pundits :: ???

I'm not sure what the difference you're trying to draw is. Pundits talk to fans. Liberal pundits exist to appeal to liberal fans.

But I guess the equivalent would be the kind of conservative cultural critic who tries to salvage something usable out of movies, music, and literature created by their enemies. Whether it is by claiming that Taylor Swift is secretly a conservative icon, or by creating godawful Christian rock music to half-ass mimc their enemies, or by constantly whining that they wish a conservative would write a decent novel.

Conservatives do write decent novels, all the time. Literature awards go to black women wokeing out all the time, but lit fic hasn’t been good for a while.

Apparently a lot of this is because of the gay-hockey-smut novel turned TV show, which brought exactly the kind of audience you'd expect.

Apparently a lot of this is because of the gay-hockey-smut novel turned TV show, which brought exactly the kind of audience you'd expect.

Serious question - When are we going to start re-diagnosing Nymphomania and Satryomania? It seems to me that there is a small percentage of the population (male / female straight and gay and ... other) that have extreme difficulty in regulating their sexual behavior both with other people and on their own.

When are we going to start re-diagnosing Nymphomania and Satryomania?

I believe the current term is 'hypersexuality'.

Male spots attract virtually no gays. Sailor was making a good point that like 1 pro athlete has died of aids but many figure skaters. So they weren’t in the closet. They are just not gay.

The FBI director being a fanboy is cringe, but that's all.

Trump's joke was barely worth a sensible chuckle, but there's one constant in all waves of feminism, which is that the feminism light bulb joke makes sense:

Q: How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: THAT'S NOT FUNNY!

Anyway, the men's hockey team will still be up to their ears in "female attention" should they want it, the bitching of sportswriters notwithstanding.

Trump's joke was barely worth a sensible chuckle, but there's one constant in all waves of feminism, which is that the feminism light bulb joke makes sense:

I agree, but there's a certain irony in feminists getting offended by a joke where the point of the joke is that feminists are easily offended. I guess they would have a point if the joke were mean-spirited, but it clearly is not.

but there's a certain irony in feminists getting offended by a joke where the point of the joke is that feminists are easily offended.

I disagree. It's kind of straightforwardly expected that someone would get offended at a joke that makes fun of them. It's a really frustrating Catch-22 attitude I see all the time:

"Men just want to uphold the patriarchy, and if you disagree it just shows how much you uphold the patriarchy!" "White people are so fragile! You don't think so? Aw, did that hurt your feelings wittle fragile white man?" "Women are so lame, amirite? Oh you're offended? See, I was right!"

It's kind of straightforwardly expected that someone would get offended at a joke that makes fun of them.

I would have to disagree with this. If the joke is (1) at least slightly funny; and (2) not mean-spirited, then it's pretty normal NOT to get offended.

I'm thinking this might be true only among men.

The FBI director being a fanboy is cringe, but that's all.

I actually forgive him, because he's been a player and a coach, so this wasn't him just throwing himself in for the photo op itself.

The FBI director being a fanboy is cringe, but that's all.

I don't even know see it's cringe, honestly.

Depends on if he was there on thr government's dime while pretending to work. Which, granted, is kind of the American Dream, but you're supposed to pretend to be kind of discreet about it with something resembling a fig leaf of plausible deniability.

At least when submitting your expense report.

To be fair, he wouldn't be the first government official trying to piggy-back off a winning team's popularity.

He claimed he was there to meet with Italian police about security in advance of the 2028 games in Los Angeles. That would seem plausible if the guy wasn't already under criticism for having a suspicious number of "business trips" to cities that just so happen to be holding events he wants to attend. The meeting was the day prior and lasted less than an hour. Meanwhile, he attended two hockey games while he was there from Friday night to Sunday night and attended two hockey games, plus a couple other "official" events that were basically just 20 minute photo ops. I can assure you that if, at any of the firms I've worked for, I used an hour-long meeting as a justification to put plane tickets and hotel rooms on the company credit card in cities where the Penguins happened to be playing away games that I attended, I would, at the very least, get a stern talking to, assuming they didn't fire me on the spot.

Who cares if it is plausible? It's the Olympics, men like sports, powerful people need time off too. He's the director of the FBI, the last few guys were spying on Senators and Presidents, for comparison.

I can assure you that if, at any of the firms I've worked for, I used an hour-long meeting as a justification to put plane tickets and hotel rooms on the company credit card in cities where the Penguins happened to be playing away games that I attended, I would, at the very least, get a stern talking to, assuming they didn't fire me on the spot.

That's fair yeah that's a very common corporate norm yeah. But there's also an entire world of high-powered corporate big swinging-dicks where rewarding yourself with big dinners and work trips is just a perk of the work.

That would seem plausible if the guy wasn't already under criticism for having a suspicious number of "business trips" to cities that just so happen to be holding events he wants to attend.

Politician and junkets? I am shocked, shocked I tell you! Let me tell you about Irish politicians and Cheltenham. Half of them head over for the racing and sometimes you'd hope they'd stay gone.

He says he was invited by a friend on the team, which I believe. I think it's about the same as Obama meeting team USA basketball in the locker room. The difference that I can see is that all of the media doesn't hate Obama with the fury of a thousand suns.

Idk man. This was probably the least controversial Olympics of my lifetime. A week later, 4chan of all places is still gushing over the woke alt hapa IVF skater chick. /sp/ jannies simply cannot delete the threads fast enough. World peace achieved.

I guess I understand the adoration of Liu, especially when contrasted with Gu, but I can't bring it in me to cheer for someone who literally has 0 ancestors who are American, who has a Chinese father and no mother.

Yet still, she participated in the ritual. She played her part, and that matters.

Are you alluding to the theory that Arthur Liu smuggled in bootleg eggs from Russian figure skaters in the mid-2000s? Because the official story is that her biological mother is a white American.

No, I have no idea about that. But a chinaman buying a white woman's egg doesn't make an American, regardless of who the woman was.

I’m not even sure what you’re getting at if someone who,

  • Was born in America,

  • Is descended from an American,

  • Speaks English with an American accent,

  • Sports American fashion trends, and

  • Represents Team USA on the international stage,

isn’t American?

In what way is she descended from an American? We don't know who the mother is.

As for how, it's easy. American is defined in the Preamble of the Constitution: ourselves and our posterity. She's not among them.

IDK the vast majority of Americans disagree with that have essentially forever. We never had a Gulf State model for immigration and we certainly could've.

You are wrong, of course. Not forever, not vast, and the majority was constructed by television and propaganda.

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Isn't her mother a white American egg donor?

Not posterity, obviously, and no, we don't know that because we don't know who that person was.

Further, I don't see any reason why an egg donor would qualify for "posterity."

By that metric neither are the Irish, the Italians, the Germans, or the Poles. Somewhere between 50 and 70% of people in the United States are not American according to you, including the current president and a substantial proportion of American war dead. Are you willing to bite that bullet?

Of course. Anyone whose family has been in this country for a hundred years or more and hasn't intermarried is very clearly separate by choice.

If the Irish want to be considered American, they should try marrying Americans instead of Irish. The same can be said for the Italians.

The Germans at least got somewhat integrated, forecefully.

Please, feed me more bullets, I will spit more shrapnel. Everything said about the Irish and the Italians a hundred years ago is true, and doubly applicable today, when the foreign-born population has once against surpassed 3 in 20, and those foreigners are not just different culturally and religiously, but genetically completely different.

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By that logic, neither is Trump.

Yes, that's right. Trump is half german, half scots. He has 1/2 parents born in America, 0/4 in American grandparents, and 0/8 American Great-grandparents. His grandfather even went back to Germany to get a German wife, not unlike the Chinese Gary Locke's father. If you have to go back to your homeland for a wife, your homeland isn't America.

If you don't have a single American grandparent, I don't see how you can consider yourself an American, and I do not mean a scrap of paper or a passport. That applies to my own family, too, but my foreign forefathers had the good sense to marry in (although it was exclusively foreign women marrying American men).

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I agree and like the civic ritual framing.

An additional angle is that a lot of people on the left have this deeply seeded sense that Men's Hockey takes the spotlight awayfrom the Virtuous Valkyries of Women's Hockey. This is why they're aren't constant viral articles about the NHL during the regular NHL season.

And interesting comparison to make is with the cringey hyper fawning of both the mainstream media and much of twitter over the Racoon Haired Ice Skating queen (I can't remember he name ... Aileen? Or is that the PLA Skier?). While I respect her gold medal accomplishment, I fail to see any reason for attraction. She's a mix of aweirdo chungus manic pixie dream girl. I've seen ring leaning twitter accounts call her "bubbly." I've seen girlboss millenials call her "everything" (which isn't specific enough to help). My operating theory is that the winter olympics create a Women Are Wonderful hyper-booster. I'm not sure why (in the Summer olympics I feel like only gymnastics is similar).

Returning to Hockey, I think the Men's Team hate is a clunky means, in part, to try and shoehorn the Women's Team into this Women Are Wonderful gravity distortion field.

the NHL is 44% Republican

So 56% is Democrat or is there a large portion of independents. To hell with stats like these, Mary Clark.

I mean how many of them are Canadian and unable to register with any party?

Right, last time I went to an NHL game (ironically, it was the Caps), a majority of the players were foreigners.

Only one league, Major League Baseball, had a higher percentage of American players who were registered as Republican at 53.7 per cent compared to just 7.8 per cent Democratic and 36.4 Independent.

The NHL came second at 43.9 per cent Republican, 5.6 per cent Democratic, and 48.6 per cent Independent.

From the article within the article.

No surprises, rich white men have no interest in the Democrats. The NFL and NBA are 35% and 43% respectively, while the WNBA (What a joke! how do you include WNBA as a 'major' sport but not MLS?) is the only one over 50% Democrat, and also by far the poorest.

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