Fox News exec’s Olympics take was so awful even Fox News deleted it

Some people say that Fox News is a fear-mongering popularizer of retrogressive prejudicial agitprop and outright falsehoods that operates without any sense of morals. But the right-wing media behemoth showed this week that it does consider some opinions too distasteful for its platforms.

Fox News deleted a column on its website about the 2018 Winter Olympics that criticized Team USA for its diversity. The offending op-ed mockingly suggested the motto for the U.S. Olympic Committee has become “Darker, Gayer, Different.”

The author? Fox News executive vice president and executive editor John Moody.

This was how he started:

Unless it’s changed overnight, the motto of the Olympics, since 1894, has been “Faster, Higher, Stronger.” It appears the U.S. Olympic Committee would like to change that to “Darker, Gayer, Different.” If your goal is to win medals, that won’t work.

No, it did not get better from there:

A USOC official was quoted this week expressing pride (what else?) about taking the most diverse U.S. squad ever to the Winter Olympics. That was followed by a, frankly, embarrassing laundry list of how many African-Americans, Asians and openly gay athletes are on this year’s U.S. team. No sport that we are aware of awards points — or medals — for skin color or sexual orientation.

For the current USOC, a dream team should look more like the general population. So, while uncomfortable, the question probably needs to be asked: were our Olympians selected because they’re the best at what they do, or because they’re the best publicity for our current obsession with having one each from Column A, B and C?

You can read the entire piece here.

Fox News published it Wednesday. Both the ugly sentiments and apparent lack of understanding about how Olympic qualification actually works quickly drew backlash. The piece was gone from FoxNews.com by Friday.

“John Moody’s column does not reflect the views or values of Fox News and has been removed,” the network said in a statement obtained by The New York Times.

Meanwhile in Pyeongchang on Friday, openly gay U.S. freestyle skier Gus Kenworthy shared a message of pride and solidarity in defiance of views such as those espoused by Moody. Kenworthy, one of the absolute very best athletes in his sport in the entire world, won a silver medal at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi.

Kenworthy is embracing U.S. figure skater Adam Rippon in the photo above. Rippon, the first openly gay male athlete to qualify for a U.S. Winter Olympic team, has been engaged in a public back-and-forth with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence about the latter’s role in Pyeongchang and his longstanding opposition to gay rights.