Wrong about Brittney Griner

When Paul Whelan’s brother, David, was asked about the release of basketball star
Brittney Griner from a Russian prison, he embodied the charity and compassion that
should be hallmarks of this holiday season. He told The Associated Press that the Biden
administration “made the right choice” in releasing a notorious arms dealer in exchange
for Griner, and he dismissed the raucous criticism that has bellowed from right-wingers,
who insist that the Biden administration chose Griner over his brother because she’s a
black lesbian woman who fits the administration’s “woke” pretentions.
Bahareh Shargi was similarly generous about Griner’s release when she was recently
interviewed on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” She is married to Emad Shargi, an Iranian-
American businessman who has been held in an Iranian prison on trumped-up
espionage charges since 2018. “I was ecstatic for Brittney and her family. Brittney
should have never been detained. . .. And I was very, very happy that she’s back
home,” she said. 
So should we all be. I don’t pretend to any expertise in the shadowy world of hostage-
release negotiations; the well-informed critics who worry that releasing dangerous
criminals in exchange for Americans will lead outlaw nations to simply detain more
Americans may be right. Nevertheless, we all ought to be able to celebrate with Griner’s
family, whose holiday season has been made much richer with her return.
Christmas is one of the two holiest days in Christendom, and those who announce
themselves as Christians ought to be displaying the spirit of love and peace and
generosity that the season calls forth. Instead, conversative Christianity, at least as
practiced by some of its more public adherents, seems to have taken a turn toward
resentment, spitefulness and contempt.
Paul Whelan, a former Marine, was detained in Russia in 2018 on an unsubstantiated
charge of treason. Biden has said that he tried very hard to free Whelan, but Vladimir
Putin refused to include him in the trade. Still, Trumpists have loudly insisted that
Whelan should have been released before Griner, who has used her basketball
celebrity to spotlight racism in the U.S. criminal justice system, a stance that, some of
her critics claim, makes her “unpatriotic.”
Kevin McCarthy, whose campaign to be Speaker of the House has showcased his
willingness to debase himself before Trumpists, was harshly critical of the prisoner swap
on Fox News: “Think about the exchange here, the Merchant of Death for a WNBA star
who was picked up for marijuana. What a victory for Putin.”
McCarthy did manage to say he was “glad” Griner was coming home, but his ally, Rep.
Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), did not. She called the prisoner exchange “another
reason to impeach Biden.”
Then there is Rod Dreher, an ultra-conservative Christian writer who is so resentful of
cultural change in his native America that he has moved to Hungary, where Prime
Minister Victor Orbán has embraced a fascist-leaning version of “Christianity” that
denounces gay marriage, castigates immigration and champions racism with a platform
of “ethnic homogeneity.”
Writing in The American Conservative, Dreher called Griner “a pothead basketball
player.” While he was careful to say her 9-year-sentence was unjust, he also wrote:
“The State Department has declared Griner to have been ‘wrongfully detained’ — this,
even though she admitted to breaking Russian law, and the evidence was found in her
bags as she arrived in Moscow. What kind of idiot tries to smuggle drugs into Russia?”

(In fact, Griner was arrested with vaping cartridges which contained slight residue of
cannabis oil. She had been prescribed medicinal marijuana in Arizona.)
Griner’s critics have failed to note the humility and grace with which she and her allies
conducted themselves after her release. According to a Biden administration official, the
basketball star greeted each member of the crew on the plane that returned her home.
At a White House press conference, her wife, Cherelle Griner, said that they will
continue to work to bring home other Americans unfairly held in foreign prisons. That
list, according to Griner’s agent, includes Shargi and Whelan.
Along with the families of Whelan and Shargi, Griner and her allies have been
exemplars of generosity and humanity. They are the role models we need during this
season.