The Olympics Have Been an Inspiring, Infuriating Shit Show

Everything we can't stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture.

Manage newsletters View in browser with Kevin Fallon Everything we can't stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture. This Week: Crying and cringing my way through the Olympics. The pornographic glory of celebrity fragrance ads. DaBaby is dumb, and that's important. Justice for Queen Deborah Cox! A lil' thank you. I've Watched the Olympics All Week. Sorry, Here's a Rant. In the first week of Olympic events and primetime coverage, there is only one moment I can think of that was truly moving and inspiring. One that represented what the Games are supposed to be about and validated my foolish decision to spend every hour outside of work watching the often obtuse and ignorant coverage of events. And that moment had nothing to do with an athletic accomplishment.    Obviously, the big news of the week, if not of the 2021 Games and maybe even this era of modern sports, is that Simone Biles withdrew from competition. This is the age of the 24/7 newscycle and, no matter what measures a sports fan takes to lock themselves in a nuclear-safe bunker to block out results before primetime, that was spoiled before most Americans had finished their morning cup of coffee by no less than 14 news alerts directly to their phones.  Of course in 2021, the competition, the TV broadcasts, the media coverage, and the ensuing discourse among dumbasses all tangle together into a ratking of an infuriating Olympic experience from which it is impossible to uncoil a single pure and joyous element.    The Biles news became inextricable from its crass coverage on NBC, the hysteria of news outlets, and the vile ignorance with which pasty men with muffin tops spilling over their stained khakis smugly opined. Just as this year's Olympic Games can't be separated by the ghoulish decision to carry on in spite of rising local COVID rates, the fact that all wins could be qualified with an asterisk given how many athletes couldn't compete, and the haunted nature of a communal international event in which a pandemic prevents any physical community or celebration.       Each night, watching the Olympics has been an exercise in escalating frustration. Yet it's still the Olympics. And there are still moments that puncture that pessimism. I cry every single time someone wins a medal. If they show the ceremony and the person tears up while their nation's anthem plays, I am inconsolable, vicariously imagining what could have been if I didn't quit soccer at age 6.    The competitors are as astonishing as ever—superhuman, really. NBC's overproduced and emotionally manipulative clip packages do their job, producing and manipulating a waterfall of feeling every time. Few things pair as nicely as schmaltz and sports.    So what do we make of that discord? The televised feats of athleticism are more intense and, really, unsustainable to the human body as ever. But so is the accompanying bullshit. This is the ugliest, most despicable Olympics I can remember in my lifetime, particularly when it comes to the cultural conversation it incites. And yet I'm addicted, deeply moved multiple times each night by what I'm witnessing. Can an absolute shit show also be beautiful?    Before I finally had the chance to watch the women's gymnastics team finals on Tuesday evening, the event in which Biles bowed out after just one vault, the day had been filled with the predictable vomit of histrionics and trolling.    News coverage used the occasion to resurface a highlight reel of every misstep Biles has made in the last year, conveniently ignoring every statement she has candidly given about how that kind of pressure has made her look forward not to the Olympics, but to when the whole ordeal would be over.    Then the sentient double chins with their podcasts and Twitter accounts weighed in, swinging their tiny dicks through racist and misogynistic monologues about Biles and the decline of American greatness. They left out the bit about how the two other GOATs they compare to Biles, Michael Jordan and Michael Phelps, once made similar decisions about their sports futures because of their mental health.    These are the same bad-faith brainworms whose only relevancy is mined from performative bloviating and chest pumping to score points in this fictional war on culture. And we let them.    After a day of that, I was shocked to watch the telecast and discover something wholly different from the darkness and pain that had defined the news' tone. What I saw was inspiring. I saw a team rally together to support their leader and prove themselves in the highest stakes of circumstances. I saw joy, the girls singing and dancing on the sidelines, Jordan Chiles' enthusiasm exploding through the screen. I saw Biles cheerleading her teammates, a smile on her face for maybe the first time in Tokyo. I saw her generosity.   None of that tracked with the toxic cesspool of negativity that permeated the day, or even with the narrative that NBC was trying to spin. They zoomed in on Biles for every close-up of a broken hero they could possibly get, and ignored the rest of the international field to key up some Hollywood-esque U.S.A. versus Russia storyline we didn't need. I've found each similarly inspiring moment to be suffocated by those same crass broadcast impulses. Tom Daley's gold medal win in synchronized platform diving made my heart soar. It was a triumphant peak of a storied career, and it mattered. It mattered because he worked so hard for it. And it mattered because, yes, he is openly gay, married, and has a child.  On the one hand, the commentators' effusive awe that a gay man got married and had a child while competing was exhausting. They were one hyperbole away from rewriting history to say that the first brick thrown at Stonewall was actually Tom Daley hurling his gold medal. It was patronizing for everyone involved: the treatment of a happy gay family in which a parent has success as a modern miracle, and the erasure of God knows how many female Olympians who also balanced their athletic superiority with motherhood.   But that predictable nonsense is far removed from the touching thing that happened here. Tom Daley, a sports hero if there ever was one, finding peace in life while achieving his dream, and working to ensure that his sexuality and activism ran parallel to his stardom and achievement. It's brave work in acknowledgment of what it means to see an openly gay athlete proudly himself while proudly also the best in the world.    Each night this week, as I've groaned when yet another U.S. swimmer was out-touched in a race they were favored to win or screamed with delight when someone like Alaskan Lydia Jacoby defied all odds to be an Olympic Cinderella story, I've wondered what it is we want or are owed from these athletes as entertainment. Especially at a time like this when the cultural reflex is to vilify every false step.    Simone Biles was made to be a tool in Gymnastics U.S.A.'s post-Larry Nassar redemption narrative. And after she left the competition, she became the object of shameless discourse about strength and patriotism amongst the nation's most dispensable cretins with platforms. For her to field those lightning strikes of abuse and repel them with her own agency is a superhero display of its own.    We act as if we were or are participants in these athletes' lifelong training and sacrifices on the way to the Olympic arena, like we should be consulted in decisions made about their bodies, the danger they're willing to face, or the future they're willing to risk to perform for us. But the only say we have is in their exploitation and dehumanization. There is nothing that they owe us.     Instead, we're gifted something. We're offered the opportunity to bask in their greatness. To be in awe of their generosity. To share in the emotion of a lifelong dream achieved as they stand proud on a medal stand, crying along with them.    I can't get over how wrong so much of what I've witnessed this week feels. And I'm so grateful to these athletes for consistently showing what's right. Shirtless Adam Driver on a Horse. It's Called Art, Sweetie. It's a big week for haunted horses. First, there was the viral story about a horse in France who travels through the halls of a hospital, choosing which terminally ill patients deserve his visit. I need to be as clear as possible on this, so listen closely: if I am ever in a hospital that employs a therapy horse, you keep that galloping angel of death far from me. Unless, of course, he is mounted by a shirtless Adam Driver, in which case this very specific manifestation from a romance novel my aunt probably read in 1992 will surely bring me back to life.  Driver joins the hallowed ranks of celebrities who star in over-the-top, gorgeously produced, and intensely pornographic fragrance ads for luxury companies. This is a microgenre of entertainment that I am fascinated by. Not even some of the Oscar-winning films that these actors star in boast such sumptuous cinematography and adrenaline-spiking storylines. That the storylines are utter nonsense and typically offer no indication that what you are watching is meant to sell a scent in a bottle is besides the point, or maybe exactly the point.    Is it the product that matters, or the taunting temptation of hotness and wealth that's being peddled to us garbage humans as we watch Natalie Portman act out a torrid romance in Paris 17 times during commercial breaks of Dancing With the Stars?   A list of things it would be fair to assume this was an ad for if you didn't know it was for Burberry Hero: fancy tight jeans, a nice beach somewhere, the CrossFit studio where Adam Driver sculpted those abs, an Olympics' open water swimming event, or maybe a PSA warning against drowning horses. Oh, it's for a cologne? Clearly we're meant to assume that, while challenging horses to a foot race and then testing their buoyancy in the ocean, Adam Driver always smells good.     I'm not kidding. These ads occupy far too much of my precious brainspace. I have studied Julia Robert's Lancome ad as if it was the center of a thesis in an attempt to determine if, in fact, she ever looked so beautiful. It got to the point in the last year that the piano twinkles at the top of Lady Gaga's Valentino Beauty spot cued me to start belting "When I was young, I prayed for lightning…" along with her. If I knew how, I would have made Charlize Theron saying, "J'adore Dior" my ringtone long ago.   Look, I don't necessarily like to admit how pathetically susceptible I am to celebrity ads. But I did recently watch an Instagram video of J. Lo doing her morning skincare routine while trying to fall asleep and woke up the next morning with $300 worth of J. Lo Beauty items in a shopping cart. The celebrity endorsement is mysteriously effective.    Even so, I remain mystified by the through-the-looking-glass lunacy of these fragrance ads. I'd also like to send a bouquet of flowers to the agency executive who, during a Burberry brainstorming session, dramatically silenced the room and said, "Friends, colleagues, fragrance wearers, I got it. Hear me out: Adam Driver swimming with a horse." Drops the mic, leaves the room. The Misfortune of Having to Learn Who DaBaby Is No grown-ass person who has long given up on understanding today's popular music actually wants to take the time to learn who the hell someone called DaBaby is. But this little homophobic attention-seeker has rendered that impossible this week, and for that alone I resent him.  The truth is that I was semi-familiar with the rapper, only because he guests on the remix of Dua Lipa's "Levitating" and his verse contains this virtuoso bit of writing in which he introduces the world's most boring dance move, recaps the title of the song, and then simply states his name: "Left foot, right foot, levitatin' / Pop stars, Dua Lipa with DaBaby." A wordsmith.   I'll try to abbreviate this week's controversy because this person barely deserves these paragraphs of your headspace.    The short of it is that he performed at the Rolling Loud music festival in Miami and during his set apparently took a time machine to the 1990s to bring back the lamest, most antiquated homophobic joke of the time and also espouse genuinely dangerous and factually incorrect views about HIV and AIDS. Why would he say these things, apropos of nothing, at a music festival? That's between God and...DaBaby. Rightfully, he was taken to task. In his defensive apology, he said people who have been "effected" [sic] by AIDS or HIV have the right to be upset but anyone in the LGBT community is, basically, overreacting.    Then, should you actually suspect genuine remorse, he released a video capitalizing on the controversy in which he held up a sign with the word "AIDS" on it and at the end posted a message saying "Don't Fight Hate With Hate" written in rainbow letters, followed by the self-absolving statement: "My apologies for being me the same way you have the freedom to be you."    That's not trolling for attention. It's juvenile, and it's despicable. There's a difference between cancel culture and accountability. Imagine if people in his position ever considered the latter instead of crying wolf about the former.    Give Deborah Cox Her Moment Year Round! One of my favorite Pride month memes happens at the end of June, when gays on social media joke about the glorious, oh-so brief resurgence of Deborah Cox's catalog of dance-floor bops.  You can't walk into a party populated by gay men in tank tops on any of those 30 days without hearing them scream "how...did...you...get...here…" at the top of their lungs in euphoria, as if they have just seen God on the dance floor, as Cox's pristine vocals escalate on the bridge to the "Nobody's Supposed to Be Here" remix. But it's funny how contained the superfandom seems to be to Pride. It's the gay equivalent of Christmas music during holiday season.   As a person who famously will listen to Kelly Clarkson's "Underneath the Tree" at all times of year, I was ecstatic that Cox was performing this past weekend at the Ocean Casino Resort in Atlantic City.    She came out Saturday night to a packed house (remember those?) at the HQ2 club and performed a set that included "Nobody's Supposed to Be Here," "Absolutely Not," and, in a moment when my champagne-drunk soul left my body and white-boy danced straight to heaven, a cover of Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody."    Deborah Cox said happy Pride, even though it's late July. And, honestly, it was nice that Ocean, which also hosted a Pride happy hour that night, said that the month didn't matter, too. In any case, let's normalize Deborah Cox music at all times of the year. Is it Halloween? "Nobody's Supposed to Be Here," slutty costumes edition. Arbor Day? Let's all say "Absolutely Not" to fossil fuels and fracking. Is it my funeral? If you don't all lose your minds to her cover of "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" while my spirit shoulder dances in the coffin, you're doing a disservice to my memory. A Big Gay Thank You You all have officially been reading me rant, rave, whine, bitch, joke, celebrate, grieve, cry, and otherwise obsess in this newsletter for two and a half years now. In the now-legendary words of Emma Roberts on the occasion of going viral with a meme in her thirties, "Thank you gays and whoever else."  Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union: Hey, remember that guy? (Tues. on HBO) Pray Away: A documentary about gay conversion therapy and its survivors. Not, like, a "yay!" watch, but an important one. (Tues. on Netflix) Cooking With Paris: It's incredibly dumb, but that's also precisely why it's great. (Wed. on Netflix Hart to Heart: Kevin, America's foremost whiner about being canceled, is back with his 10th or so project in the last two years. (Thu. on Peacock) Jungle Cruise: "Ingeniously re-creates all the fun of waiting in line for a ride." -Vanity Fair (Fri. in theaters and on Disney+) Advertisement © Copyright 2021 The Daily Beast Company LLC 555 W. 18th Street, New York NY 10011 Privacy Policy If you are on a mobile device or cannot view the images in this message, click here to view this email in your browser. To ensure delivery of these emails, please add emails@thedailybeast.com to your address book. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, or think you have received this message in error, you can safely unsubscribe.