US fields strongest team of gasbag Olympians ever

By A.J. Liebling
Meta-Content Generator

Instead of wasting time watching teen-agers slide around bumpy slopes or dough-faced Canucks throw rocks down ice-covered alleyzzzz . . . .[Wake up! – Ed.], why not join the real excitement as the United States fields its strongest team ever at the Gasbag Olympics held this year in that mecca of world-class pontificators, Chevy Chase, Maryland?

Bret Stephens, headed straight downhill

Only the Spy gives you the dopes [Surely, the inside dope? – Ed.] on the most-watched events.  Let's start off with a perennial crowd pleaser, the Straight Downhill Pundit.  This year the favorite for the Gold Zeppelin has to be the New York Times's brilliant rookie downhill racer, Bret Stephens.  He was brought in by the powers that be at the Times to provide “balance,” which means the ruminations of a privileged white reactionary male who usually manages to avoid the most paranoid ethnic and racial slurs.

And Stephens didn't disappoint, heading downhill at lightning speed by defending Woody Allen from charges of sexual abuse of what what would have been his stepdaughter had he married the girl's mother.  Stephens raced past other defenders of white men behaving badly by pointing out that unlike Larry Nassar, Allen had not been accused of abusing 285 women.  Instead, Stephens pointed out that Allen had been accused of only one gruesome felony.  Like Leopold and Loeb.

Showing his tremendous talent for crashing into every tree on his epochal downhill run, Stephens claimed that the prosecutor had exonerated the aged creep.  When Tommy Vietor pointed out on Twitter that the prosecutor had in fact said there was probable cause to charge Allen, Stephens stepped on the gas and said he could no longer abide Twitter.  And who can blame him?  It's no fun to not have the last word.

But the Karolyi Institute of gold-medal gasbags that is the New York Times op-ed page has fielded other strong medal contenders.  In the 20,000-Word Marathon of Ignorance, both white male favorites hale from the Times:  David “the Old Perfesser” Brooks and Ross Douthat.  Both have inveighed endlessly on matters utterly outside their comprehension, such as a woman's right to control her own body.  The Old Perfesser showed true gasbag Olympic form by purporting to tell Democrats that the way to win elections was to abandon their pro-choice platform, on the grounds that women in only 20 states or so would lose their access to safe, legal abortions.

Of course Monsignor Douthat has been railing against abortion rights since his altar boy days and has recently extended his maledictions to pornography on the entirely irrefutable ground that he doesn't like it.  Look for this team of ignoramuses to finish one-two.

Turning to the women on the Times team, the leading contender for the coveted Hillary Clinton Triple Pretzel has to be once again Maureen Dowd, who has taken the gold in this event in every Gasbag Olympics since 1992.  Tying every social ill to Hillary Clinton's decision not to divorce her horndog husband when Dowd told her to is a grueling technical challenge that no one has mistressed [Surely, mastered? – Ed.] like well-known marriage authority Dowd.

But lest you think that American's medal hopes rest solely on the Times editorial page, fear not!  In the Mansplaining Biathlon (combining patronizing women with sulking when such conduct is pointed out on set), MSNBC's two seasoned wrecks [Surely, vets? – Ed.], Joe Scarborough and Chris Matthews, are expected to do extremely well, which means for the ladies out there that they will win.  Got it, gals?

The U.S. is also fielding a strong team in the 180 degree Republican backflip, in which former hacks and coatholders in the Reagan and Bush Administrations now claim to be shocked, shocked to discover that the Republican Party is nothing but a deplorable basket of grifters, wife beaters, and hatemongers.  Both the U.S. men (Steve Schmidt, David Frum, and Hot Air Force General Billy Kristol) and women (Nicole Wallace, Jennifer Rubin and Ana Navarro) are expected to be formidable, as long as no one looks at what they actually said and did from 2000 to 2012.

Piers Morgan goes for the brown [Surely, gold? – Ed.]

With such a strong U.S. team, can any other country expect to strike gold at the Gasbag Olympics?  Fortunately, the poor sad United Kingdom is expected to win in the the prestigious Anglo-Anal Tongue Wrestling event, due to Piers Morgan's epic performance on President U Bum's, um, bum, captured by the BBC here.

Just remember, in the Gasbag Olympics, it's never just about winning the medal, it's also about winning a seven-figure book deal and/or anchor slot.  So light the flaming gasbag and let the games begin!