Fox News Yanks John Moody’s Incendiary “Darker, Gayer” Olympics Column: “Does Not Reflect Views Or Values” At Company
Fox News yanked an online column about the Winter Olympics, written by longtime Fox News executive John Moody, in which he blasted the U.S. Olympics Committee, saying it would like to change the Olympics motto from ‘Faster, Higher, Stronger’ to ‘Darker, Gayer, Different.'”
“If your goal is to win medals, that won’t work,” Moody complained in the column, which was posted Wednesday and pulled Friday around 10:30 AM PT, after getting blasted on Twitter and in statements issued by various human rights organizations.
“John Moody’s column does not reflect the views or values of FOX News and has been removed,” Fox News said in a statement.
According to a Fox News insider, the column was not vetted before it was posted; the source blamed editors “too deferential” to Moody “given his longevity” at the network. Back in 2016, Moody was among those whose names were being bandied about as a possible Roger Ailes replacement.
“In Olympics, let’s focus on the winner of the race – not the race of the winner,” Moody had written, taking issue with a USOC official who recently praised the diversity of the U.S. Olympic delegation.
Moody authors FoxNews.com’s Bellwether column.
In the yanked Wednesday column, he wrote that complaining that every Olympics team “isn’t a rainbow of political correctness defeats the purpose of sports, which is competition.”
Moody also wrote, “Insisting that sports bow to political correctness by assigning teams quotas for race, religion or sexuality is like saying that professional basketball goals will be worth four points if achieved by a minority in that sport – white guys, for instance – instead of the two or three points awarded to black players, who make up 81 percent of the NBA. Any plans to fix that disparity? Didn’t think so.”
Same day Moody’s column went up, USA Today had an article headlined “Openly gay figure skater Adam Rippon declined chance to speak with Vice President [Mike] Pence.” Rippon previously slammed the White House for picking Pence to lead the official US delegation to the 2018 Winter Olympic opening ceremony, telling USA Today in an earlier interview, “You mean Mike Pence, the same Mike Pence that funded gay conversion therapy?”
U.S. skier Gus Kenworthy, another openly gay Winter Olympic athlete, similarly called Pence a “strange choice” to lead the U.S. delegation in an interview with Ellen DeGeneres.
Before becoming Donald Trump’s Veep, Pence was the governor of Indiana maybe most famous for signing the controversial Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 2015, allowing businesses to turn away gay and lesbian customers in service of “religious freedom.”
Among Moody’s other recent Fox News online columns is one from January 26, in which he wrote about Trump’s address at the world Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland:
“What did you expect? An orange-haired gorilla to hop around onstage? An unhinged maniac to threaten nuclear war, a la Kim Jong Un? No. What attendees at the Davos hug-fest saw on Friday was a calm, controlled Donald Trump, in charge of his message, which was, simply: America is no longer your patsy.”
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