Courtesy to the Host

I back-slid last night. I watched several hours of Olympic coverage. It was all that I had known it was going to be; and that isn’t a complimentary statement. It was over-blown. It was inane. It was politically correct. It was apologetic to dictatorial regimes and antagonistic to America. It was commercial. And, pervading the whole thing was a sense of surrealism.

There have been those incredibly maudlin puff-pieces about the overcoming of tragedy in the lives of athletes that participate in the Games ever since the Eighties and maybe before. We learn about their broken homes, their accidents, their poverty, their prevailing against incredible odds and hopefully we become more emotionally involved when they eventually take the world stage. We get reprises from games past of pre-pubescent female gymnasts breaking ankles, taping wrists, enduring pratfalls and living through embraces of sweaty European male coaches. We see the life story of Eddie “the Eagle” Edwards, a mis-guided Brit who gains his Warholian fifteen minutes of fame by hurling his body off a 90 meter ski jump despite never having done it before, having no chance at victory and only a slightly better chance for survival. Gag me again.

Then we watch the NBC announcers extolling the Chinese to the point of fawning adoration. The progress, the beauty, the history, the productivity, the courtesy, the far-reaching efforts of the host committee, the growth and progress of the nation are all subjects for comment by the talking heads. No mention during the techno-super opening ceremony that recaptured Chinese history of the twentieth century at all. Where was Mao? Where was Chaing Kai Shek? Where was the Cultural Revolution? What of the gray buildings and polluted skies and waterways? How about acknowledging that Chinas is where it is today because of the far-reaching political courage of that most maligned US President, Richard Nixon? Why not say that free market capitalism, even under a single party political dictatorship, can raise a people faster than the flooding Yangtze can raise a boat?

Nope, not a word of the dark side. Only praise for China, which is certainly good and proper with respect to your hosts. It is also reasonable to acknowledge the progress of the nation. But, why must every pat on the Asian back be followed by a slap to the face of the US? From Brokaw to Costas to Palmer and Lauer, they all snark their way through the evening and will do so for the next two weeks. Gag me once more.

Then there was the “sports” themselves. It makes me wonder what the Greeks would have made of it. There was badminton, a back-yard BBQ pastime elevated to Olympic competition. How about women’s beach volleyball? Sure, it’s athletic, but let’s admit that it’s really about watching semi-naked toned women leaping and stretching and looking really hot. It’s a sun-tan oil sponsored “event” not a sport.

Try a few minutes of watching that street developed gaggle called team handball. Take a softball, if you don’t have a bat and mitts, and toss it around from team mate to team mate to advance, limit the number of steps before you can throw it and then toss it at the kid from two blocks away on the other team who tries to keep it out of a goal, which is the space between two parked cars. Or something like that.

The real beauty was synchronized diving. We’ve had synchronized swimming for years, so why not have scientific proof of Galileo’s thesis that gravity effects all bodies at the same rate? You get more points for making a smaller splash! But it ain’t a sport. More gagging.

Remember Jim Thorpe? He was an incredible decathlete and pentathlete. Think about those combinations of sports and the amazing capability to be world class across that spectrum. The achievements were discredited, however, because he was tinged with accusations of professionalism. To be a proper Olympian, one must be a true amateur in every sense of the word.

Contrast that with today. Look at the millionaires taking the court in basketball, both men’s and women’s. Check out the rosters of the baseball squads. Dig back into the training facilities and support that these “amateurs” in all the sports today receive. Then, take a look at the teams of some of these smaller nations. Who are the representatives and where do they come from? Is there a bidding war going on for talent? Do potential stars that have a problem making the home team go on the global market for a slot? Where do they train? Who pays for it? There is something under the surface here and I wonder why the “journalists” at NBC don’t spend a lot of time on that issue.

I concluded last night that the Olympics aren’t about sport in the least. It’s just another reality show, scripted and not “real” in the slightest. It’s entertainment. I had enough.