How an off-colour joke about women putting on blusher – and an orgy of blasphemy – expose the hypocrisy behind cancel culture

On Saturday night, as the Australian women’s 4x100m freestyle relay team left the Paris Aquatics Centre, a sports commentator named Bob Ballard remarked: ‘Well, the women [are] just finished. You know how women are… hanging out, doing their makeup.’

Ouch.

The fact is that this was an unnecessarily sexist comment.

Four women had just performed brilliantly and won gold. And now a 64-year-old man was musing on the way they had applied lipstick and mascara, as if they were teenage girls about to hit the town.

His co-presenter on the Eurosport channel, British swimming champion Lizzie Simmonds, immediately called his comment “scandalous”.

Subsequently, his words went viral on social media and the collective power of the online woke community was unleashed on the veteran former BBC journalist.

Eurosport immediately bowed to the masses and sacrificed one of its own members to the condemnatory bloodlust of the internet.

A statement condemned Ballard’s “inappropriate comment” and added that “he has been removed from our comment section effective immediately.”

Ballard was on the next plane home, despite his mea culpa and extensive apology posted on X (formerly Twitter). It had no effect whatsoever.

This is the world we live in now, a world in which there is no room for forgiveness or understanding. Men of Ballard’s generation — he was born in 1959 — occasionally lapse into a style of small talk and banter from another era that clashes with the painfully awake younger generation.

He didn’t mean to belittle the swimmers, he just didn’t think before he opened his mouth.

I find this state of affairs deeply depressing and it seems that many decent people agree. A staggering 55,000 people responded to a MailOnline poll on the matter yesterday and 72 per cent thought Ballard should not have lost his job over it.

Most agreed that this was a “ridiculous cancellation” over a comment that was clearly “a joke,” and Ballard’s social media feed was flooded with messages of support.

Bob’s words went viral on social media and the combined force of the online woke community was unleashed on the veteran former BBC journalist

One post read: ‘Countless hours of commenting, trying to keep things interesting and entertaining, sometimes when not much is happening. And then deleted for one misjudged comment. A chance to apologize seemed more proportionate. Take care of yourself, Bob.’

That is understanding, that is humanity.

The woke left ideology poses as moral and decent, yet holds the guillotine of cancellation over the head of any individual who says something they deem “offensive.”

It is precisely the defenders of the canceled programs, the sympathizers of the victims of political correctness like Bob Ballard, who really give voice to the civilized virtues of forgiveness, understanding and freedom.

In just a few days, the Paris Olympics will have exposed not only the ruthless nature of cancel culture, but also its hypocrisy.

Because if you really want to hear some “offensive” commentary, forget Bob Ballard’s lame joke about the Australian swimmers and instead watch the Games’ opening ceremony on Friday.

There I saw a much greater humiliation of women during that rainy festival along the Seine.

The beheaded Marie Antoinette singing a heavy metal song was certainly in bad taste, but most disturbing was the grotesque caricature of The Last Supper.

A group of transvestites gathered around a plump woman with a halo. For me – and many millions of viewers – this was a blatant parody of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous depiction of Jesus with his disciples on the night before his crucifixion and before he was betrayed by Judas.

Next, the drag disciples were “presented” with an obese, naked, blue-painted man on a platter of fruit.

So that’s okay, right? A lame joke about women wearing blusher will get you run out of town, but turn Jesus Christ into a woman and surround Him with flaunting transvestites in a blasphemous orgy of Bible-mocking vulgarity and you’ll be praised.

Because of course the woke fans were ecstatic about this performance and praised the ‘transgressive’ humiliation of women and Christianity by the artists, despite the outraged cries of religious followers.

The opening ceremony organizers apologized and denied that it was a parody of The Last Supper.

I am not convinced. In fact, let us not forget that this is an Olympic Games in which a convicted pedophile is allowed to participate.

Steven van de Velde is a member of the Dutch beach volleyball team, despite being found guilty of raping a 12-year-old British schoolgirl in 2014, when he was 19 years old. He was sentenced to four years in prison.

In the warped moral universe of the woke movement, making a politically unpolitical joke is considered a greater crime than abusing a child or insulting billions of decent people of any religion around the world.

It tells me a lot that Bob Ballard has behaved in an extremely friendly manner, despite his sudden dismissal.

“The comments I made during the Australian freestyle relay victory ceremony on Saturday caused some offence. It was never my intention to offend or disparage anyone and if so I apologise. I am a huge supporter of women’s sport. I will miss the Eurosport team immensely and wish them all the best for the rest of the Olympic Games,” he posted on X after the row broke out.

And after seeing the backlash against his co-host Lizzie Simmonds, he even urged users not to ‘follow’ her.

Old-fashioned courtesy, you might say, from a man whose career was irreparably damaged by one ill-conceived joke.