From Riley Gaines to OU, conservatives are making their failures everyone else's problem

I don't remember any of my failing grades making national news — but then again, my mom's not a lawyer for January 6 insurrectionists.

I come from a family that's pretty strict about grades. My mom has been a professor at state universities almost as long as I've been alive, so she always prioritized education. "It's the one thing that can't be taken from you," she'd say.

I didn't bring home many failing grades when I was in school, though that may be attributed to a healthy sense of fear rather than my own aptitude. But when I did fail? I was the one in trouble. My mother didn't file a complaint with my school, and she certainly didn't take me to the local news station. She told me to do better: to either genuinely apply effort or, if necessary, learn from the mistakes and improve myself.

I imagine that's how many of us grew up. It's something the modern conservative movement also loves to uphold — the emphasis on personal responsibility as opposed to systemic failures. The "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" mentality.

And yet, never before has someone become so famous for coming in fifth place or failing a homework assignment than through the modern conservative movement.

If you don't know who Riley Gaines is, that's really how it should be. She tied for fifth place in the 200-Yard Freestyle at the 2022 NCAA Division I Women's Swimming & Diving Championships, marking the end of an unmemorable career as a college athlete. At least it would have, had she not tied for fifth with a transgender woman.

Gaines has spent the years since her loss publicly attacking Lia Thomas, the woman she tied with, and using her as supposed evidence for why trans women should be banned from women's sports. If only Thomas hadn't be allowed to compete, Gaines laments, then she wouldn't have had to wait for her fifth-place plaque to be shipped to her and could've left with it in hand, knowing she still lost to four cisgender women.

Gaines has since made an appearance on what seems like every conservative talk show online and on-air, amassing a ton in both dollars and followers. But does anyone even remember who actually won that race? I had to look it up — it was Olympic bronze medalist Taylor Ruck, who, despite her success, still appears in the news less than Gaines.

Related: Georgia judge tosses out most of failed college swimmer Riley Gaines’s NCAA lawsuit over trans athletes

Now University of Oklahoma student Samantha Fulnecky is trying to get the Gaines treatment after receiving a failing grade for an essay that claims trans people are “demonic” and that gender roles are “Biblically ordained.” Fulnecky didn't cite any sources — not even a quote from the Bible she claims to follow so closely — leading the multiple reviewers of her work giving her a zero.

Mel Curth, the graduate student instructor who handed down the final grade, told Fulnecky that she wasn't being failed because of her religious beliefs, but because the paper “does not answer the questions for this assignment, contradicts itself, heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence in a scientific class, and is at times offensive.” These are standards upheld at all serious academic institutions, and would see Fulnecky's paper receive zero points even in an eighth-grade class given the assignment of Baby's First Essay.

But Fulnecky did not try to expand her knowledge of the field she seemingly wants to enter. Instead, she filed a religious discrimination complaint — on which the school sided with her, placing Curth on administrative leave.

Related: Texas A&M professor fired over discussion of gender identity

The whole incident seems rather targeted when you factor in the fact that Curth is trans, and Fulnecky's mother has long tried to make a name for herself in the conservative scene. Kristi Fulnecky is an attorney and former politician whose time on the Springfield City Council in Missouri was marked by controversy. Oh, and she defended two people involved in the January 6 insurrection.

Now Samantha Fulnecky is the one making the rounds through conservative talk shows. It is a grift taking advantage of the easiest way to become famous today, and it is a grift built off the modern conservative movement's platform of entitlement and weaponization of religion.

Despite their obsession with personal responsibility, conservatives can't admit when they fail. It is the school's fault I received a failing grade for the same reason it is the immigrant's fault I can't find a job — because to admit otherwise would show weakness, and weakness is something to be eradicated.

It is not just grades, trophies, or jobs that conservatives feel entitled to. Their movement revolves around entitlement to land, to women's bodies, to impose their beliefs on others, or simply to inflict the pain they feel on others. (You'll notice that both Gaines and Fulnecky are women. That's because when conservative men are confronted with their own failures or do not get what they want, they become mass shooters.)

We are now well past 800 words, meaning I've likely put more time and thought into this article than Fulnecky did in her 650-word paper. If I am not nominated for a Pulitzer by next week, you'll be hearing from my lawyers.

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