God bless the Women's Tennis Association. They've got their jaws clamped around China's ankle and they're not letting go.
The Chinese and their willing enablers, the International Olympic Committee, have finally produced missing tennis player Peng Shuai, sort of, with video of her at a couple of public events and a 30-minute video call with IOC president Thomas Bach in which the IOC says Peng assured them she was safe and well at home in Beijing.
Now, I don't know if that call actually happened, or if Peng said what the IOC said she said. And I don't find that skepticism misplaced.
This is because the WTA remains skeptical itself, if not of the call at least of the entire affair. The Chinese government, after all, certainly seems to have muzzled Peng after she went public with allegations of sexual abuse against a former government official. Her social media post was immediately scrubbed from the interwhatsis, and Peng vanished for three weeks.
The WTA says Peng apparently turning up does not change its call for "full, fair and transparent" investigation into the Peng situation. Again, God bless 'em.
At least they're no mollycoddles -- unlike the IOC, who have willing knuckled to the Chinese out of craven self-interest. There's simply no other way to see the IOC's statement about the alleged video call, given that the Peng situation has cranked up the volume on calls to boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics.
The IOC must be terrified of that. And so they've joined hands with a repressive regime in a campaign of state-sponsored propaganda aimed at easing international condemnation. Their mothers must be so proud.
Unlike the mothers of the WTA members, who actually should be.
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