On Saturday afternoon, as Australia’s women’s 4x100m freestyle relay team emerged triumphant from the Paris Aquatics Centre, a sports commentator named Bob Ballard observed: “Well, the women are finishing up. You know what women are like – twirling around, putting on makeup.”
Oh.
We cannot ignore the fact that this was a gratuitous sexist comment.
Four women had just put in astonishing performances to win gold and here was a 64-year-old man mulling over his lipstick and mascara application, as if they were teenagers about to go out on the town.
His Eurosport co-presenter, British swimming champion Lizzie Simmonds, immediately called his comment “scandalous”.
Bob Ballard, front left, with British swimming champion Lizzie Simmons, who called Bob’s comment “outrageous”.
His words then went viral on social media and the combined power of the progressive online community was unleashed against the veteran former BBC journalist.
Eurosport wasted no time in bowing to the crowd and sacrificing one of their own to the bloodlust of the censorious Internet.
A statement was issued denouncing Ballard’s “inappropriate comment” and adding that he “has been removed from our commentator roster effective immediately.”
Ballard took the next plane home, despite his mea culpa and effusive apologies posted on X (formerly Twitter). It made no impact.
This is the world we live in now, a world in which there is no room for forgiveness or understanding that occasionally men of Ballard’s generation (he was born in 1959) lapse into a style of small talk and old-fashioned banter that clashes with the painfully awake younger generation.
He didn’t mean to belittle the swimmers, he just didn’t think before opening his mouth.
I find this situation deeply depressing and it seems that a lot of decent people agree with me. Some 55,000 people responded to a MailOnline poll on the subject yesterday and 72 per cent believed that Ballard should not have lost his job over this.
Most agreed it was a “ridiculous cancellation” for a comment that was clearly “a joke,” and Ballard’s social media was flooded with messages of support.
Bob’s words went viral on social media and the combined power of the progressive online community was unleashed against the veteran former BBC journalist.
One post read: “Countless hours of commenting, trying to keep things interesting and entertaining, sometimes when nothing much is happening. And then I got deleted for a misinterpreted comment. It would have seemed more appropriate to have had the opportunity to apologize. Take care, Bob.”
Now, that is understanding; that is humanity.
The woke left presents itself as moral and decent, and yet hangs the guillotine of cancellation over the head of every individual who says something they deem “offensive.”
In fact, it is the defenders of the canceled, the sympathizers of victims of political correctness like Bob Ballard, who really give voice to the civilized virtues of forgiveness, understanding, and freedom.
Just days after the Paris Olympics, not only was the ruthless nature of cancel culture exposed, but its utter hypocrisy was also laid bare.
If you really want to see “offensive” comments, forget Bob Ballard’s silly joke about Australian swimmers and let me refer you to the Opening Ceremony of the Games on Friday.
There I saw a much greater degradation of women, at that rainy festival on the banks of the Seine.
The headless Marie Antoinette singing a heavy metal song was certainly in bad taste, but most disturbing of all was that it was a grotesque caricature of The Last Supper.
A group of drag queens gathered around a plump woman wearing a halo in what seemed to me (and many millions of viewers) a direct mockery of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous depiction of Jesus with his disciples the night before his crucifixion and before he was betrayed by Judas.
The drag queen disciples were then served a corpulent, naked man, painted blue, on a tray of fruit.
So that’s all well and good, right? A bawdy joke about women wearing rouge will get you run out of town, but turn Jesus Christ into a woman and surround him with preening drag queens in a blasphemous orgy of Bible-mocking profanity and you will be praised.
Of course, progressives have been thrilled by this performance, praising the performers’ “transgressive” debasement of women and Christianity despite howls of outrage from those of religious persuasion.
The organizers of the opening ceremony apologized for something and denied that it was a parody of The Last Supper.
I am not convinced. Worse still, let us not forget that these are Olympics in which a convicted paedophile has been allowed to compete.
Steven van de Velde is a member of the Dutch beach volleyball team despite being convicted of raping a 12-year-old British schoolgirl in 2014, when he was 19. He was sentenced to four years in jail.
In the distorted moral universe of progressives, making a politically incorrect joke is considered a greater crime than abusing a child or offending billions of decent people of religious faith around the world.
I find it telling that Bob Ballard has behaved with the utmost kindness despite his abrupt dismissal.
“The comments I made during the Australian freestyle relay victory ceremony on Saturday have caused some offence. It was never my intention to upset or belittle anyone and if I did I apologise. I am a huge supporter of women’s sport. I will miss the Eurosport team very much and wish them all the best for the rest of the Olympic Games,” he posted on X after the row broke out.
And after seeing the beginnings of a backlash against his co-host Lizzie Simmonds for her criticism of him, he even urged users not to “go to” her.
You might say it’s old-fashioned chivalry, coming from a man whose career may have been terminally damaged by an ill-judged prank.
