Coaching Gabby for Discrimination

As an Olympic gold medalist, Gabby Douglas has become a national heroine, and is now doing the lecture and talk show circuit.  Such activities no doubt redound to the benefit of what should be her bank account, and I hope that the dollars are still there when she reaches her age of legal majority so that she herself can have access to every dollar thus posted, and not have her money squandered by profligate guardians (as happened to child actor Jackie Coogan) or swindlers.

Gabby's remarks on Oprah Winfrey's show have now caused a public stir.  I will presume that the misadventures publicly related by Gabby happened substantially as stated.  This is not so much a straw man argument or an allocation of the burden of proof so much as it is a reflection of my own experiences as a minority group member who has had occasion to endure analogous bias.  From this presumption (which, again, I believe to be well founded), it follows that:

A.  The biased and bigoted remarks uttered by Gabby's training mates are not to be condoned.  Period!

B.  The biased and bigoted remarks uttered by Gabby's training mates were every bit as detrimental to Gabby as claimed.

C.  As detrimental as Gabby's experiences (and, for that matter, mine) were, other successful people have endured far, far worse.  An example that immediately comes to mind is that of the late Admiral Hyman Rickover, whose page in the yearbook from his Naval Academy class (as well as the page of the other Jewish class member) was perforated so that it might be torn out by classmates who preferred to not have Jews as their equals.

[Yes, I know that Rickover did have some very serious personal issues in dealing with his own Jewish identity.  He nevertheless did more than his part, after advancing to the higher Navy echelons, to combat Naval institutional prejudice against Jews, Blacks and other minorities, contributing in no small measure to bringing the U.S. military closer to the ideal of a true meritocracy.].

With her Olympic medals, Gabby Douglas has had placed into her hand a retribution of the highest order against her former training mates and coaches at the Excalibur Gym.  Any future medals can amplify that retribution all the more.  Similarly, Admiral Rickover's successful career in the Navy was a sharp slap in the face to all of his Annapolis classmates who ripped Rickover's page out of their yearbooks.  For that matter, I do not doubt that many of those who assailed me (verbally and otherwise) in my youth have cringed upon reading of my own personal and professional achievements.

Those on the left side of the political spectrum seem to have a need to be victims, and those liberals of privilege who relish their personal creature comforts often satisfy that victimhood requirement with proxy victims for whom their hearts can bleed.  Many such victims-by-proxy go to great lengths to develop and train their proxies.

Gabby Douglas can now step beyond victimhood if she is not co-opted as a victim by the leftist political agenda.  Immediately prior to her appearance on Oprah, she had the esteem of virtually all of America, irrespective of political orientation.  But if Gabby allows herself to be so co-opted (not unlikely, given that her mother seems to be in the tank for Oprah Winfrey, Jesse Jackson, Barack Hussein Obama, ad nauseam), then those at the Excalibur Gym who taunted Gabby will no longer feel chastened by her success, but rather, will view Gabby's fixation with victimhood as a vindication of their attitudes.