The most un-serious Olympic Games in history are finally over.
Yes, the United States tied with China for the most gold medals, narrowly derailing a propaganda victory for the Chinese Communist Party. But mostly, the games will be remembered for their absurd viral moments: the opening ceremony mocking Christians; the woke virtue signaling on the gymnastics podium, only to be embarrassingly reversed; the casual Turkish marksman and the French pole vaulter whose blessing turned into a curse. However, the gold medal for absurdity undeniably goes to Australia’s Rachael “RayGun” Gunn.
This is Rachael Gunn, she has a PhD in cultural movement and convinced Australia to pay for her trip to the Paris Olympics.
She participated in break dancing and got 0 points.
— BowTiedMara (@BowTiedMara) August 10, 2024
The internet has exploded with memes and mockery since the Aussie breaker’s embarrassingly awful performance. Unsurprisingly, it turns out actual dancing is only her part-time hobby; Gunn is a full-time left-wing lunatic and university lecturer with a PhD in the cultural studies of dance. But as is often the case with left-wing ideologues, we’re faced with the question: is this incompetence or malice?
But before we can answer that, we have to ask: how the hell did she get into the Olympics in the first place?
Paris was the first — and likely last — time that breaking was included in the Olympics. And the dancers seemed just as surprised as everyone else to finally be included, according to a report by Fox Sports. The Olympic qualifiers were overseen by the World DanceSport Federal, an organization historically dedicated to ballroom dance. The WDSF had long tried to get ballroom dancing into the Olympics, but knowing it lacked contemporary relevance, pivoted to breaking in what critics called an “underhanded plot.” And the Olympic Committee was more than happy to go along, since the sport is popular in France.
This brings us back to Gunn. The easiest explanation is incompetence all around:
Internally, those responsible for organizing breaking were themselves incompetent, never implementing any worldwide governing body like other dance sports. They were unprepared when tapped for inclusion in the Olympics, which wanted to virtue signal by including a historically African American sport and looked for any way to give it a rubber stamp of organized legitimacy. This gave the WDSF an opening to take over the sport from the outside — even though it was woefully unqualified to judge this form of dance. As a result, they awarded Gunn the winner of the small 15-woman qualifying competition, giving her a ticket to the Olympics. (RELATED: Fans In Shock After Competitor In New Olympic Event Does So Poorly. Internet Ruthlessly Mocks Her)
Bloated bureaucracy is always incompetent. But Gunn’s own incompetence shines through individually.
If the WDSF could not tell she was unprepared for the Olympics, Gunn, as a self-styled expert, should have known herself. Instead, her credentials had the opposite effect; her expertise in theory went to her head, making her think she could succeed in practice. It’s no different than academic neocons starting wars with no military experience, or economist regulators destroying markets that they have no private sector experience in.
Yet a closer look at her academic record hints that her performance might be about more than just incompetence. Breaking’s inclusion in the Olympics faced a lot of push back from left-wing academics, including Gunn. As a traditionally African American form of dance, lefty academics whined that the WDSF and Olympics would co-opt an organic form of cultural expression. In effect, they accused the Olympics of gentrification by the white male patriarchy.
Gunn co-authored an academic paper to this effect in April 2024. “We argue that breaking’s institutionalization via the Olympics will place breaking more firmly within this sporting nation’s hegemonic settler-colonial structures that rely upon racialized and gendered hierarchies,” she wrote in the abstract of a rambling paper.
So it’s at least worth asking: is RayGun just a terrible breaker, or did she sabotage her own sport?
Breaking is not scheduled to be included in the 2028 Olympics. But there’s still a possibility that it may be included in 2032. However, that seems unlikely given how Gunn made a mockery of the sport and her performance is all anyone’s talking about. If she wanted to ensure that breaking remains an institutionally irrelevant street culture free from “settler-colonial structures” she couldn’t have played her hand any better than she did. Plus, she can now use her Olympic performance to author another idiotic paper and boost her profile in academia. (RELATED: Irish Competitor Rushed To Hospital After Swimming In River That Gov’t, Olympic Officials Told Everyone Was Fine)
Overall, this whole saga is the perfect encapsulation of late stage liberalism. We have a liberal establishment that wants to platform an under-represented demographic, but does so in the most bumbling way possible. Then we have a self-righteous, adversarial left-wing academic criticizing the establishment for doing so, claiming the moral high-ground herself as the true defender of the sport. They both claim to elevate the sport, but instead, they both make a mockery out of it. And it’s the people who they claim to help that pay the price. How many serious breakers will now lose out on the chance to showcase their skills in the Olympics because of liberal buffoonery?
It just goes to show, everything liberalism touches — dies.
