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Nancy Pelosi should have another title: The Speaker of politically-correct platitudes.

On May 18, during a congressional hearing on the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, Nancy Pelosi called for a "diplomatic boycott." It is an eerily familiar scene. Back in 2008, during her first run as the Speaker, she called on then U.S. President George W. Bush to boycott the 2008 Beijing Olympics' opening ceremony to protest against China's human rights record. Now, in her second run, she said "we cannot proceed as if nothing is wrong about the Olympics going to China," referring to the alleged "genocide" in Xinjiang.

As a savvy political operative, her remarks check all the "politically-correct" boxes: Appealing to the public, businesses and other world leaders with the "moral" challenges if they support the Games; allowing the athletes to attend, so that no one could accuse her of being unfair to the athletes; and painting the Games as a watershed event, that attending the Games means the collapse of the U.S.' authority on human rights.

The inconvenient thing about "politically-correct" platitudes is that they tend to invoke a vague emotional response instead of being sound in a logic that could withstand closer examinations. For most countries and the overwhelming majority of the public, the Olympics are about sports, not a homage to the hosting country, isn't it? When heads-of-states and dignitaries attend the opening ceremony or the games themselves, they are supporting the athletes and the athletic spirits. There's no clause or directive made by the International Olympic Committee that says attendees have to make a pilgrimage to the hosting country to support the country.

So, when Pelosi said "let's not honor the Chinese government by having heads of state go to China to show their support for their athletes," she's either not well-versed in the nature of the Games, twisting the Games to her own liking, or simply doesn't care about the Games but only looking for a chance to slam China. And apparently, she doesn't want other leaders to support their own athletes at the site of the support. To her, "honor them at home" is far better way to let the athletes feel the support, because the first priority is using the Games as a political rugby field and trying to make the United States come out on top.

And honestly, the U.S. is either not confident enough about its human rights record or has a fragile one if the third most powerful person in the country thinks it could be broken by going to a sporting event. So, let's take a look, shall we?

Just look at the one closest to home. Pelosi has represented California's 12th Congressional district since 2013 and the city of San Francisco since 1987. And according to studies from UC Berkeley, as the housing prices in the city rose between 2000 and 2015, the share of low-income Black households living in "high-poverty, segregated neighborhoods" rose from 41 percent to 65 percent. And the study points out that, in 2015, "low-income white households in San Francisco were three times more likely to live in higher resource areas than moderate and high-income Black households."

When COVID-19 hit, the effects of racial disparity and income inequality kicked into full gear. In July 2020, Bloomberg published an article saying that Hispanic and Latino people made up 50 percent of COVID-19 infection cases while only accounting for 15 percent of San Francisco's population. The high-end employers in the region – tech companies like Facebook and Google – had only less than 10 percent of their staffers as Black or Latino. While high-paid workers are "mostly shielded" from layoffs or risks of exposure on their way to work, low-income workers suffered from facing these obstacles head-on.

Similar things happened across the United States when the pandemic hit. Pelosi retook the Speaker's gavel in early 2019 and has presided over the biggest loss of American life since World War II. And her country, the administration controlled by her own party, refused to distribute vaccines to other countries even though it has hoarded enough to vaccinate its population several times over. 

Is this an epitome of human rights? As the Speaker of U.S. House of Representatives, she might want to focus more of her energy on taking care of the United States and using less "politically-correct" platitudes to speak for others.

There's hope. At least she acknowledged that a diplomatic boycott may not work. "I don't know if it's possible, because we have not succeeded in the past." No worries, it wouldn't succeed in the future either.

Scriptwriter: Huang Jiyuan

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