Liang Ghow, Gabby Douglas' Chinese American Olympics Coach

Gabrielle Douglas and Liang Chio her Chinese Coach

I didn't even notice the Time cover that featured rising star Gabby Douglas who appears to be the biggest draw of the 2012 olympics. She's even more popular than Michael Phelps if television interest is any measure. It's a big deal probably because of all  the sports, plenty of which are dominated by Africans by now, it's the "girliest", and traditionally any woman who stars in Olympic women's gymnastics get to be bigger with girls than any of the Disney princesses.

Funny, although the US and China are always neck and neck in the medal count, we don't see too many of the Chinese or other Asians in US coverage, and the relative success of Asian women in figure skating hasn't carried over into gymnastics, and that spectacular Catholic Korean girl Yun Na didn't exploit her success outside of Korea after the winter Olympics.

Anyways, lots of people must notice the smiling chinese guy who is her coach, Liang Chow (actually Qiao for those of us who can read official Beijing spellings).  Seems once Gabby got really serious, she got into an athletic coach crush when she saw him in the Beijing olympics helping out the  American team.

 Chow was on the Chinese national team, but never did make it to the Olympics. He had a sister out in Iowa who invited him to cover over and work as an athletic coach at a college there. He liked it so much he opened up a gymnastics school for younger women. Gabby finally met the coach when he was a guest at Virginia Beach and was impressed when he taught her a tricky new move in no time flat, and decided that someway, somehow, she was going to have him as a coach. Her mother resisted as she joked it only had cornfields and no people out there, but she somehow showed up at Chow's doorstep, and he called up the Missy and Travis Parton family who had made an offer to be a host family for any girl who showed enough promise to make it to the olympics, and they took in Gabby who fit in as a eldest sister. Doesn't sound like this family ever had a "who's coming to dinner" moment when she showed up. I love this girl because sounds like she's red-white-and blue inside when she is so fearless about tracking down a Chinese coach and being brave about living with a strange family in a far away place in one of the whitest places in America.

Not everybody is a big fan of Gabby. She evidently never had a proper upbringing with a poet uncle like our President Obama had in Frank Marshall Davis to radicalize her into realizing the realities of an America where we are all supposed to be in fear of each other and demanding grievances from every other group by the time he was high school. She obviously never heard Marion Barry of DC demand that African Americans drive out blood sucking Asian businesses from their communities. Mary Elizabeth Williams of Salon wrote “Did God help Gabrielle Douglas win?  who finds that this "teenager of deep faith and gratitude" is "a little unnerving.” Why? Because she's openly Christian.

Oh, she's not prejudiced or intolerant or hateful at all. In fact she's a Christian herself. Or claims to be. She doesn't think ALL Christians are bad, she believes:

We are a nation that is lousy with Christians — a fair number of whom are not nearly as nice as Gabby Douglas. A lot of them aren’t super-clear on the whole “freedom of religion” thing and can get pretty gung-go about trying to shut down people with different beliefs. A lot of them are insistent that everybody in the world should conform to what they know for an absolute fact is the one and only truth. So even when Douglas is merely expressing her personal philosophy, posting #christmotivation quotes in her Twitter feed or talking about how she meditates daily on Scripture, there’s always that lurking hint of proselytism. Dear Christians: It’s a fine line between sharing your beliefs and selling them.

Yup, she obviously isn't prejudiced, except about people she thinks are nearly all prejudiced and constitutes the #1 Threat To The Civilized World, not Iran, Russia, China, or Al Queda. It is also interesting NBC chose not to air the opening ceremonies when they remembered victims of the "7-7" London bombings, which was their counterpart to 9-11, but among some is politically incorrect to blame as radicalized religion Al Queda operations. I think those of us who are Asian American Christians can safely assume she and her compatriots are equally aghast at Asian Christian, or any color, whether they are White,  Hispanic, or especially in Gabby's case, African American. Jesus only advocated that people who believed in him should chose not to simply do everything everybody else did, and their rewards would be in heaven. He never advocated imposing those beliefs on everyone else.

Unlike the Chick-Fil-A  CEO, Gabby didn't even have to make any statements about any policy other than tweeting thanks to her savior to put her character in doubt as a likely hate-er. Makes me wonder about those young ACLU folks I talked on the streets about about "human rights" who were 200 percent for running any Christian-run chicken restaurant out of town for having intolerant views on marriage.  How do you think that makes the 50% of Americans who have the view feel if they know they will be run out of town next on the basis of their religious and cultural beliefs?  

They said we should not shut down the conversation on marriage but this is hardly how to encourage freedom of speech and conscience when it only goes one way. Please, we need a nation that permits free thought and expression, not one that trades and enforces political correctness of any stripe. If people want to revise marriage, I'm almost libertarian enough to think about it, but not if it's a trojan horse  excuse to switch from persecuting one group of people to a more politically correct group of victims.

Some people have a very hard time telling the good guys from the bad guys. But a sure sign is when somebody puts in a lot of work to say something bad about someone who is obviously good.  Clearly, when someone has the nerve to  openly express disdain for somebody as sweet and nice as Gabby Douglas, something is up. That should give us some idea of what side we should be on if we need some hint as to which side is for love and brotherhood, and which is one is for social revolution.