Us is written on a really low level. Fine. But don't tell me this is "What to Know." There's obviously a deeper dimension. I want to know. What happened to the other 4 children? Were they pushed into any sport? What did they do while Arthur was spending so much time aiming a radar gun at Alysa? Were they all conceived as designer babies, then tested to determine who had the talent and who deserved attention and money showered on them? Should a single man be able to buy his way into fatherhood for 5 children? What does Alysa really know and how does she really feel?
ADDED: I'm just noticing the weirdness of the expression, "I spared no money, no time." We understand it to mean that he spent endless time and money, but if you stop and think about it, it seems to mean the opposite, that he gave no time or money. It does make sense if you understand "spared" to mean, held back for myself.
AND: I'm seeing this NYT article, "In Her Big Olympic Moment, Alysa Liu Celebrated Her Freedom/Competition can wreck a figure skater, but Liu and other Olympians shed the pressure and delivered transcendent performances focused on artistry." The word "father" appears nowhere. I searched for "Arthur" and got only "MacArthur Park," the song she skated to. Apparently, no on wants to touch the father problem. The Olympian parents are always devoted and earnest, watching hopefully from the stands.
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52 comments:
There’s a 60 Minutes piece about daughter and father Liu. He says he spent $500,000 to $1,000,000 getting her trained. But after watching her performance, totally worth it. She’s a singular talent like Patrick Mahomes or Creighton’s Doug McDermott.
Imagine what China would be like if people like Arthur Liu were able to live in China in a free and peaceful society.
Arthur Liu has a very slight accent which I thought was remarkable. And a Hastings grad too!
I'd assume the strange locution comes from his native Chinese sentence structure literally mapped into English. The way Russians sometimes drop definite articles when they speak
English (they don't exist in Russian).
Double negatives are supposedly incorrect in English. They are permitted in Latin languages.
People say it in colloquial English: "I spared no expense." We also say: "I can't spare any money." Does "spare" mean giving the money or not giving the money?
So all the kids have different mothers. But no mother raised them?
When I first focused on "spare," I thought he was making a non-native speaker mistake, but I think his word use is colloquial. So I'm pointing it out as an English oddity.
Should a single man be able to buy his way into fatherhood for 5 children?
Does a coelacanth need a moped?
I have a better idea: What to Not Care About Olympic Gold Medalist’s Dad Who Welcomed 5 Kids Via Surrogate
"She’s a singular talent like ...Creighton’s Doug McDermott."
LOL, no.
Curious George: I meant Doug McDermott when he was in college. He was the consensus POY. Watching him play in person, he was just so much better than the other players. I thought he was going to be the next Larry Bird, but I was wrong. In any event, I don’t care about the NBA. Different game.
Hans Mahncke
@HansMahncke
I think almost everything that can be said about Eileen Gu and Alysa Liu has already been said, but when I step back and look at the full picture, I keep getting blown away by how reality handed us a script far more perfect than anything fiction could invent.
On one side, you have the cold, elitist “I’m the most decorated” athlete, raised in one of the wealthiest and most exclusive neighborhoods in the country, Sea Cliff, who gladly sold out the country that gave her everything in order to became the PR face of a brutal dictatorship in exchange for a few suitcases of cash. On the other side, you have the happy-go-lucky, “That’s what I’m fucking talking about” girl from working-class Richmond, coerced by Communist Party operatives, refusing to bow to them, and proudly representing the United States. And that does not even begin to touch on the tortuous path Alysa’s father had in getting to the United States, compared with the easy route taken by Eileen’s mother, or the many other layers of this story.
And then, perfectly, one wins both her competitions and the other loses both. If anyone tried to make a movie out of this story, no one would believe it.
“All five children were conceived using anonymous egg donors (chosen partly for a diverse/multicultural gene pool - the donors were Caucasian) and carried by two gestational surrogate mothers.”
At 40, being single with no prospects, he went this route. He said he always wanted a big family.
Now can we hear all the usual commenters say what a selfish bastard he was for not marrying and having kids with his wife. Kinda like you do when a woman chooses that route?
People say it in colloquial English: "I spared [myself] no expense." We also say: "I can't spare [you] any [of my] money." Does "spare" mean giving the money or not giving the money?
In the first case he does not spare himself any "expense" on behalf of his daughter. In the second, he refuses to spare any of his "money" on behalf of someone else.
Do the mothers not have any agency? Who are they and did they raise the kids to a certain point? They are just "surrogates?" Did they just hand over their babies?
I have questions.
"Dave Begley said...
Curious George: I meant Doug McDermott when he was in college. He was the consensus POY. Watching him play in person, he was just so much better than the other players. I thought he was going to be the next Larry Bird, but I was wrong. In any event, I don’t care about the NBA. Different game."
He was a great college player for sure, but that alone doesn't make him a "singular talent."
I do get carried away about Creighton basketball. I admit that.
This whole discussion feels strangely critical of the father.
Yeah, using spare that way is idiomatic but in that kind of context it is almost 100% prevalent.
"..What happened to the other 4 children? Were they pushed.."
into the waste can?
If this happened not long after birth,
it would have been completely moral, according to modern dems.
Serious Questions:
If i genetically choose my daughters to excel at sports..
Does THAT make me evil?
WHAT IF, i genderlly choose my daughter (MTF) ?
Does THAT make me evil?
Will short people (or redheads) exist in another generation?
If so.. WHY?
ps. i'm NOT saying that THIS Dad did these things,
i'm taking the ball and running with it
I think the possibly contextually ambiguous use of “spared” should be sanctioned.
She is a singular talent. I confess that if a nice long article were written about whether you can tell when you are picking a donated egg whether the mom is on the 99th percentile on this or that feature, whether the dad has full-time in-home baby and children carers (and if so, did one or a few of them stick around and play an ongoing care role) and all of that. I would spend hours reading that article.
Should a single man be able to buy his way into fatherhood for 5 children?
How is this a question?
Arthur has the financial means and sufficient judgment for this to work out. We could hear more about the 4 siblings, but it would be surprising to learn that they were deprived in any way.
When I was single and 40 years old, I wouldn't have been able to properly care for a dog. Arthur seems to have managed.
Perhaps Eileen Gu represents the future of the Olympic Games when there will no longer be any nations and athletes will represent their races and ethnicities.
Should a single…?
Should a homosexual man/woman/couple…?
Or, perhaps it’s better for a single man to knock-up half-a-dozen women and walk away from all of them?
Spare me the moralism.
'Expense' and 'money' are two different things. I think Lui expressed himself poorly - I think that he meant to say that he 'spared no investment of money and time' .
Ann Althouse said...
People say it in colloquial English: "I spared no expense." We also say: "I can't spare any money." Does "spare" mean giving the money or not giving the money?
Based on the passionate responses, this was a flammable comment. Or was it inflammable?
I don't know where Olympic figure skating can go from here; because the perfect gold medal routine was just performed.
The back story on the father is sufficiently strange. It's not the kind of thing many men will be tempted to try at home. He certainly succeeded with Alysa. She has a winning personality, exuberant and effortlessly likable. Still, you wonder about the other kids....Many years later we learned that the back story on the Dionne quintuplets wasn't all that edifying. We'll see how it develops, but there's nothing to criticize about Alysa or her performance.
Womb farms.
Bob Boyd said...
“Perhaps Eileen Gu represents the future of the Olympic Games when there will no longer be any nations and athletes will represent their races and ethnicities.”
America is an idea, a culture (ok, a set of them), not an ethnicity, per se.
So, if I won a medal in the Olympics, would 8/16ths of it go to Germany, 5/16ths to Italy, 2/16ths to France and 1/16th to Spain?
Watch the 60 Minutes interview, available on YouTube.
Samuel Johnson said "A man is seldom so innocently employed as in getting money". This is true of Olympic athletes also. I don't begrudge Eileen Gu the extra five or six million she picked up for skiing for the Red Chinese. And if Beyonce or whoever wants to pick up a few million singing at some Sultan's wedding, then have at it However, I think Alysa has the more engaging story. and I hope that in the long run, it proves to be more lucrative. We'll see how it develops. There was a time when it looked like Nancy Kerrigan was going to be America's sweetheart, but that's not the way it turned out. Will this be a Hallmark Movie or a subplot in a Tarantino movie?
Olygimpics will Happen to Us in the Future
The youngest 3 are triplets. According to grok: Yes, the triplets (Julia, Justin, and Joshua) were almost certainly the result of a purposeful transfer of multiple embryos, rather than a spontaneous or unexpected occurrence.
That’s a dedicated surrogate.
I don't follow women's ice skating. If it's on, I'll watch it, but I don't go out of my way to see it. I caught one brief fragment the other day. There was this Ukrainian skater who was strikingly beautiful. She was slight and intense with coal black hair and eyes. She gave off an Audrey Hepburn vibe. If she had won, she would have become a superstar. Thirty seconds into her performance, she fell on her ass. That's the way the cookie crumbles. No podium for her. She'll have to find some way to pick her way through life as a beautiful young woman with Olympic level skating skills........I can see how people get tangled up in these figure skating contests. There's a lot of drama. Perhaps next time they can have Bad Bunny do a half time show to help ease the tension.
BTW, Dad is an immigration attorney.
@ Rocco
Did you even read my comment?
The children had a Mother while growing up. Seem she deserves a mention.
"Yan "Mary" Qingxin is the former wife of Arthur Liu and acts as the legal guardian and "mom" to Olympic figure skater Alysa Liu and her four younger siblings. Despite her divorce from Arthur Liu, she remains a close, central figure in the children's lives, with whom they have resided part-time."
We've gone from "I couldn't care less" to "I could care less," means the same if sarcastic. Making a funny face: I'm so worried about you, or: I love that outfit.
Oversee/oversight: implies supervision, management, rational and responsible care for something. Overlook: neglect, unless one of those places to pull over in the mountains. Oversight can also mean neglect or carelessness. An overview might be too brief to be the basis for a decision: a mere introduction, perhaps overseeing the whole project while overlooking many things.
The IVF stuff is a new one in the annals of melodrama surrounding Olympic athletes. There can only be so many siblings dying of cancer at an early age, parents who just retired dying in a car crash, and so on. We were heading down the road to ugly break-ups, abortions, and having kids you never see. Jerry Springer stuff. Sure, you're in the Olympics, you got all the breaks when we were kids! Which might come up in the Alysa Liu situation. One thing I read said Arthur did not know the identities of the two surrogates: one for Alysa, the other for triplets plus one. May or may not have been seeking the genes of a star athlete?
The egg donors were anonymous but Alysa has met her surrogate mom (who is also the surrogate mom to the triplets).
Alysa and the triplets had the same surrogate mom. But Selena and the triplets have the same egg donor.
2 surrogate moms and 2 egg donors.
Axolotl tanks. The Ghola Olympics! CC, JSM
The children’s grandmother came over from China and live with them and helped out according to that US article. She went back to China in 2016.
The dad sounds like a very determined and conscientious father. And perhaps a little too intense,
In some ways, he kind of reminds me of gay couples like Elton John, for example, who found a partner relatively late in life and had to boys with surrogate mothers. I think Ricky Martin did the same thing and our secretary of the treasury. Scott Besant also has done this with his partner. Brian Kelly, the Points guy and travel expert decided to have children. He’s gay and has a full-time nanny.
We don’t tend to think of men being so family oriented, but there are some men who really do want children. There’s probably many men who want children, but for some reason that isn’t talked about very much.
Sorry for all the typos when I add a comment via iPhone.
Bob Boyd said...
“Did you even read my comment?”
Yes, I did. I was so busy getting the proportions right, I typed the country names instead of the ethnicity names. So let me try again:
If I hypothetically win a medal in the Olympics, which of my ethnicities will get the credit under the ethnic representation plan? Will 8/16ths of the medal go to the Germans, 5/16ths to the Italians, 2/16ths to the French, and 1/16th to the Spanish?
Probably there won't be a white European team.
I'm not advocating this system, just trying to imagine how the globalist, post-national world might work. They seem obsessed with race and ethnicity.
Maybe they won't allow competitions at all.
Womb farms and sperm banks have been politically congruent choices for singles, infertiles, and couplets. Seems toxic. Feminist approved?
This article is helpful on explaining the context, but also uses language that is a bit confusing: https://web.archive.org/web/20191209234800/https://www.si.com/olympics/2019/05/16/alysa-liu-us-figure-skating-future-quads.
Notably, Liu’s father was married to a woman (who is also Chinese) when all his children were born, and she is also a legal guardian of them and they regard her as their mother. They’ve since divorced but the children still spend part of their time with her. But the article talks about the decision to have children as one that he made solely on his own. It talks about him looking for an egg donor and says he was married “when the children were born.”
In other words, the impression you get from the article is that this was a married man who wanted to have children, but his didn’t want to be a biological parent or give birth to those children, though she would raise them as a legal mother. It’s very strange and there’s some sort of missing piece here.
This article has her father’s reaction to the gold medal and some of his reflections on the past: https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/2026/02/21/alysa-liu-father-olympic-gold-medal-journey/88790157007/. Also interesting reading.
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