Another forgettable athlete wins over the media with an act of faux bravery

Not all athletes become household names. But there is now a reliable path for them to take to try and build their personal brand: Make a faux show of progressive political bravery, the more consonant with elite politics, the braver.

The latest example of this is Gwen Berry, the Olympic hammer thrower who finished third in the U.S. Olympic trials. Berry, who hates America but wants to represent it in Tokyo, threw a tantrum that the national anthem was played while she and the two women who beat her were on the podium. “I feel like it was a setup, and they did it on purpose,” she said. Berry appears to think that the national anthem was played specifically to upset her, proving that she is as self-centered as she seems.

Whether she actually hates the country enough to be angry upon hearing the national anthem or it was all performative, she achieved her real goal. Her name is everywhere in the media. An otherwise forgettable athlete became a household name on social media overnight. DeAnna Price broke meet records on four of her six throws and broke the American record on her last two. She won the event, and Brooke Andersen placed second, but now their names are buried in every media story in favor of the third-place finisher.

Adam Rippon followed this same path. The former figure skater started a feud with former Vice President Mike Pence where none existed, attacking him for having the temerity to be a prominent Christian Republican. Naturally, the press ate it up.

From the Magazine: Adam Rippon wants to stay famous, but he doesn’t want to be known for figure skating anymore.

Will America still be rooting for him? Will you? https://t.co/PFDb1FvdmS pic.twitter.com/xoYbM3IhVB

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 15, 2018

And, of course, there is Colin Kaepernick, the inspiration for athletes looking to make easy money without doing or risking everything. His Super Bowl appearance in the rearview mirror, Kaepernick started kneeling when he was an afterthought in the league. At the time, he was one of two mediocre quarterbacks on a bad football team. He was a candidate to be cut. Then, he turned his quickly fading football career into a multimillion-dollar endorsement deal from Nike.

Neither Kaepernick nor Rippon nor Berry did anything brave. They simply built their brands by acting out in conformity with the dominant progressive culture. They were otherwise forgettable athletes, pretending either that they themselves are oppressed or that they are speaking out against nonexistent oppression in the United States.

So congratulations to Berry, who achieved her real goal, which was not going to the Olympics but going viral on Twitter and receiving glowing news stories covering her “brave” protest. It was a personal branding success for the third-best female hammer thrower in the country. But a personal branding success was all it was, and all her little tantrum represented was her own ego.