Going for the gold: The Lavender Tube on Olympics and election fever

While American swimmer Caleb Dressel didn't meet the gold medal challenge that was expected of him, seeing him lounging in an ice bath with hundreds of cubes on top was something and just one of many moments of fun in this absolutely riveting extravaganza.

France's swimming ace Léon Marchand could not be cuter as he's been swimming to beat American Michael Phelps' record as all-time male Olympic medal winner. Phelps spoke lavishly about Marchand as an athlete. (Watch on YouTube)

Marchand got the loudest response to his first win, brought Macron to his feet and had all the fans cheering. (Watch on YouTube)

And let's face it, the French national anthem is just far superior to our own, whether that's due to that scene in "Casablanca" or not. The entire place sang along to "La Marseillaise" with the 22-year-old swimmer who is also a member of the Arizona State University swim team. Marchand is the son of former French medley swimmers Xavier Marchand and Céline Bonnet.

And America's own male gymnastics team did fabulously. Stephen Nedoroscik, the "Pommel Horse Guy," with his Clark Kent-style take-off-the-glasses-and-save-the-day routine that wowed everyone and became an internet meme brought Team USA to a historic medal for the U.S.—the first in 16 years for the men! (Watch on YouTube)

Downside
But there's always a downside to the games where someone hates losing and has to make a fuss about it. In Paris that person was Italy's Angela Carini, who didn't like getting hit by Algerian fighter Imane Khelif, so stopped their fight after 46 seconds (how did she get to the Olympics?), saying her nose, which wasn't even bleeding, was too injured to continue. Carini then gave a tearful press conference in which she claimed Khelif was not female. (www.nbcnews.com)

It doesn't take much to trans a female athlete. We've seen it happen for decades. We wrote about it in 2021. No shock that the women under assault are nearly always women of color like Khelif. (www.epgn.com)

There's never a whiff of a gender controversy without the world's most famous —or infamous— transphobe weighing in and within moments of Carini's tearful drama as she held her nose she got hit in like it was, you know, a boxing match, J.K. Rowling had blasted a hashtag on Twitter to her 14.2 million followers, doing her best to destroy the young woman from rural Algeria who was born female, raised female, submitted all the appropriate paperwork to be considered as a female participant in the Olympics and had played fairly as a female.

Chiming in with her own half million followers was San Francisco's resident conspiracy theorist and total Q Anon crazy lady Naomi Wolf, who once-upon-a-time was a feminist and Democratic strategist but went totally off the rails during COVID.

The transing of lesbian athletes has been going on forever. Martina Navratilova experienced it and yet has made her own awful transphobic statements. Brittney Griner is going through it yet again at the Paris games. She's a lesbian, she's not trans, she's not intersex and yet she's being attacked brutally on social media as she performs in Paris.

Also being attacked is Ledecky, who is not trans, not a lesbian and is just apparently too good of an athlete to be considered female. The comments about her online are disgustingly transphobic.

Women athletes have different bodies from other women. This is a fact. It doesn't change their biology. And the rules for actual trans and nonbinary athletes, of whom there are few, are pretty rigid and have to do with testosterone levels and birth certificates.

Allowing the transphobic mob to take over the identities of female athletes is the antithesis of feminism, it's the antithesis of "protecting" women's sports, it's the antithesis of humanity.

Imane Khelif doesn't understand what she is being put through. She was sobbing in the arms of her coach, crying to her father who was forced to wave his child's birth certificate in the faces of all and sundry. (www.nbcnews.com)

The brutal irony is that Algeria is a wildly anti-LGBTQ country. So Rowling and her mob are literally putting this young woman's life at risk, and couldn't care less.

Standards of female beauty and femininity are different in different cultures and in different races and ethnicities. Some female athletes meet general standards of beauty like lesbian Olympic runner Sha'Carri Richardson, who is pretty and petite, while others, like Khelif and Ledecky and Griner, do not.

It's a grim controversy and it should never have happened. Khelif's medals will now be challenged as will her entire identity. It's a black mark on an otherwise extraordinary Paris Olympics.

The failure to address the attacks on Khelif (and Ledecky and Griner) allows transphobia to flourish and expand to touch every woman who doesn't meet European, white heteronormative standards of femininity.
(Watch on YouTube)

Athletically fun and funny
One of our fave bits in the Paris games has been Snoop Dog for NBC/Peacock and especially the segments with his friend Martha Stewart. (Watch on YouTube)

Another fun turn is "SNL's" Colin Jost in Tahiti covering surfing. (Watch on YouTube)

And who can forget French pole vaulter Anthony Ammirati's unfortunate mishap in his second attempt to place when a certain part of his anatomy tipped the bar.

Vote for your life
It's only been two short weeks since President Biden withdrew from the race and Vice President Kamala Harris became the putative Democratic nominee, but in that time, there's been a tectonic shift in the country. The entire tone of the political landscape has changed and it is evident on our TV screens 24/7 as well as in the streets and of course on social media. It's Kamala time and we are so here for it.

The Democrats had been in a state of despair and disarray while the GOP had been riding the sick wave of the attempted assassination of their disgraceful and disgraced candidate Donald Trump. Trump was up in every poll, both overall and in the seven swing states that will determine the election.

But the arrival of the youthful, confident, soignée Harris marching down the steps of AirForce Two and striding across the tarmac of city after city has signaled a new day. The first Black, South Asian female nominee has changed everything.

The "dangerous San Francisco liberal," "radical progressive prosecutor" and "senator with the most progressive record" that Trump's and the GOP's ads are depicting has energized Democrats and Independents and set Trump, JD Vance and the GOP team into a whiny, tantrum-throwing spin.

One truly radical thing Harris can claim credit for is a polling shift. Democrats' poll numbers, along with the chances of holding the White House another four years which was in serious doubt two weekends ago, have rebounded. Harris has pulled ahead of Trump both nationally and in several swing states.

And while the race remains closer than a hare's breath in this wildly divided nation where half the country thinks some evangelical god that isn't any Jesus in any Bible chose a billionaire fraudster, adjudicated rapist and submissive to dictators as his emissary on earth, the Harris wave of excitement and energy is rushing through like a tsunami of childless cat ladies.

The Trump team is running scared and heading for their safe space—Fox News. Trump announced and the New York Times, which can't help falling us in this moment, reported as fact that he would debate Harris on Fox News Sept. 4, rather than the agreed upon TV debate on ABC News, Sept. 10. Harris volleyed back that she would be on ABC with or without Trump speaking to the American people.

If Trump is too afraid to debate the "radical from San Francisco" Vice President who he told the National Association of Black Journalists in a contentious exchange with ABC's fabulous reporter Rachel Scott isn't even Black, how can he possibly stand up against America's adversaries?

With Scott, Trump said, "So I've known her a long time, indirectly, not directly very much, and she was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage."

Trump then said, "I didn't know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black," he continued. "So I don't know, is she Indian or is she Black?"

There was an audible gasp in the room as he said this. Harris has always
identified as Black and South Asian. She attended Howard University as an undergraduate where she was a member of a Black sorority. (www.cnn.com)

The attacks against Harris are going to get more racist, more misogynist, more wrong and more desperate. Trump is using racial animus to unite his base against Harris, focusing on immigration and presenting Harris as the same color as the criminals stealing services from white Americans. It's gross, but it's Trump.

On ABC's "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said that Trump falsely questioning Harris's racial identity at the NABJ conference was an "impulse" move, not a strategic one.

"This is what happens, George, and this is how you can tell that this race is changing, because what happens is, when Donald Trump's ahead and he feels like he's comfortably ahead, he is willing to go with conventional, smart political advice," Christie said.

He continued, "As soon as he thinks it's getting close, he goes back to the greatest hits. You saw this at the convention — when he didn't think he was getting the reaction he wanted from the beginning of the speech, he went back to the greatest hits. You saw it at the NABJ, and you saw it last night in Atlanta."

Supportive readers
Finally, we spent two weeks in the hospital, eight of which were in the ICU. In that time we received a humbling 20k+ messages on Twitter/X of support and healing. Among those were many tweets from BAR readers of this column and we are so appreciative of your concern. It's been a grueling time and we are facing a long cancer struggle, but the support is such a help. Thank you.

We wrote about what our own experience meant and means for our community and how the Democrats have to shift the narrative to things that matter from things that do not. (www.epgn.com)

Hang on, folks. To paraphrase Bette Davis in "All About Eve," it's gonna be a bumpy ride until November. So, for the thrills, chills and spills, you know you must stay tuned.

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