The wrong fight

 Simone Biles stretches the tape measure at 4 feet, 8 inches on a good day, but you wouldn't want to throw down with her. She's won 11 Olympic gymnastics medals; she's hurdled roadblocks both physical and mental that would leave an alpha male crumpled in a corner weeping; and all of that means she's fearless in a way most humans are not.

Humans, like, oh, say, Riley Gaines.

She's the former college swimmer who was beaten by a transgender and used it as fuel to become the darling of the political right, which sees her as a courageous advocate for girls and women's sports. In this precinct, however, she just seems like a mean girl (of which the right seems to have an inexhaustible supply) who's still butt-hurt about getting beat.

In other words, this is either about her mettle, or her medals.  

Simone Biles has both, and that's a bad deal for poor Riley. Also a bad deal for Riley was her going Full Mean Girl recently, making fun of the Minnesota State High School League for congratulating Champlin Park High on its softball state championship.  Champlin Park, you see, has a pitcher who either is or isn't -- oh, no! -- one of those icky transgenders.

Riley obviously came down on the "is" side of the equation, even though that's still being debated in court. Called the pitcher a "boy."

It takes an ultra level of nastiness for a grownup to pick on a high school kid, especially publicly, and I can say that with some authority because I covered high school sports as an ink-stained wretch for four decades. Grownups who do that are garbage. They're the lowest species of life form the planet can offer -- and, yes, in case you're asking, I've seen a specimen or two in my time.

The good news is, they frequently attract attention from those they'd rather not.

Which is what happened to poor Riley, because her Mean Girl-ness landed her on Simone Biles' radar. And Biles promptly took her to the woodshed on social media.

Here's what she posted:  

You’re truly sick, all of this campaigning because you lost a race. Straight up sore loser. You should be uplifting the trans community and perhaps finding a way to make sports inclusive OR creating a new avenue where trans feel safe in sports. Maybe a transgender category IN ALL sports!! But instead… You bully them… 

Whoa.

Of course, Riley fired back by mentioning Biles' testimony about sicko doctor Larry Nassar abusing her and many other gymnasts, apparently trying to make a point about what happens when men exploit women athletes. It was the wrong response in the wrong fight to pick, because the analogy was both laughable and disgusting. 

Trying to draw some sort of sinister parallel between sexual abuse of women and transgender athletes just trying to fit into a world that too often rejects them? Seriously, Mean Girl?

The Blob has long maintained that the anti-transgender-athlete movement, if it can be called that, is just bigotry with its hair combed and its shoes shined. This is largely because the "problem" of transgender athletes is mostly an invented one, given that there are so few transgender athletes and even fewer who excel. The overboard hysteria the Riley Gaineses of the world have whipped up thus reveals far more than intended, it seems to me.

As it apparently seems to Simone Biles, too.