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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   12644 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.

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.

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