There has been a lot of talk about NBC's coverage of the London Olympics. It's mostly negative--as this is mankind's neutral position in the Internet age--but this idle American has been like a pig snout deep in a star spangled trough. Every four years NBC no longer has to stare wistfully across the aisle at China Central Television, All Russia State Television, and Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. They get to make some propaganda of their very own. Only the Olympics could grant NBC enough license to mangle the narrative into this perfect vision of the motherland, and I'm blissfully bound in red, white, and blue.
Of course NBC's cameras will be trained on American athletes, and the puff pieces will be marshmallow stuffed, but it's not just the overtones telling me America is the best, it's the undertones telling me other countries are the worst.
Being an 80's baby, I'm genuinely moved by the Cold War hostility NBC's sportscasters worked into their color commentary. Quick reminder, the Cold War was awesome. We had spies and double spies and nukes and government run witch hunts and the USSR and just...everything was perfect. We knew our enemy and we had a brick and mortar wall to act as the perfect symbol of the most pissing-contesty conflict in our history. A dog was launched into space! What a glorious, ridiculous time to be an American. Ugh, the War on Terror sucks so hard. But I digress...
You know what I've learned from NBC's reeducation? Russia's lady gymnasts are divas. Like total bitches. That one Chinese swimmer is probably doping. Then there is the Chinese diver who's parents kept the death of her grandparents--and her own mother's battle with cancer--from her until moments after she won gold medal because she, "belonged to the program." Then there is the Chinese gymnast who has only been home 17 times since 1996. And my personal favorite, when Grenada's statesman and national hero Kirani James won his country's first ever gold medal--as he walked off the track with his nation's flag draped around him--the commentator reminded us Grenada was liberated by the US of A "in the 80's...under Reagan." Under Reagan! When America was GREAT!
It's all said with the same rosy enthusiasm and casual air as talk of Jordyn Wieber's indomitable spirit. NBC always manages to find shots of our rivals failing and coverage of American's medaling. Our allies achievements carry some weight, our antagonists victories come with a measure of cynicism, and an American's fourth place finish is more coverage worthy than an Iranian's gold medal.
As it should be.
(But seriously, Iran won three gold medals?)
Oh, and massive shout out to my corporate overlords for teaching me to feel again. The "Find Your Greatness" campaign from Nike and the P&G "Moms" commercials get me every time. Holy Capitalism, I love this country.
The Grand Quality of Life-A-Thon
Or: "Hey, we're China, and we have all your money. Did we also mention the state has complete control? That's how we can pass laws like 'every town has to have a basketball court.' And take children from their parents to develop them into precision athletes. Sleep tight."
The Olympiad represents a country's ability to facilitate a "system". Even Gabby Douglas moved to Iowa at 14 to live with a host family while she trained under coach Liang Chow. (Can we sub in Gabby for one of the Obama girls? Not Malia, the other one...) But this is all representative of our extremely high quality of life. We live in a society where there is enough money and individual interest to go around where one can not only thrive as an elite gymnastics coach, but girls can leave their families for stranger families--Who pay for them to eat? And buy their clothes? And don't charge rent?--and train under this coach in hopes for Olympic gold. This is the byproduct of a network of individuals and money and a very efficient system.
There are plenty of Olympic sports with minimal requirements. Track--distance running or sprints--you just need feet (sorry Pistorious, you count too, I'm just saying). Soccer? You need a round hunk of garbage to kick around by yourself. Wrestling, humans have been doing that as long as we've had competitive instincts. The hope is a quality system can identify these athletes and provide an environment to hone their skills. But the further you go into the catalog of obscure Olympic events, it seems like the systems get smaller and the number of weird pieces of specialized equipment goes up exponentially. And stuff costs money.
Can you imagine the cost of a skeet shooting set-up? Dressage? Velodrome cycling? Gymnastics? Shhhheeeeeit, I can't even name 75% of the gadgets inside a gymnasium, much less comprehend how their cost fits into a business model where you're viable once every four years.
Huffington Post does this very cool, yet HuffPosty, interactive graph. It shows three medal counts; one simply the number of medals won, another adjusted by population, and the other adjusted by GDP. It's kind of a cluster, but it's interesting to ponder. By my totally flaky math, America has one gold medal per 6,773,737 citizens whereas Jamaica has one gold medal per 677,325 citizens. Not to mention the two countries GDP's have a gulf of trillions between them. What's the deal USA?
It adds some perspective to Olympic dominance as a numbers game, and how money, culture, and resources factor into building Olympic athletes, but it raises even more questions. How many elite athletes around the world fall through the cracks? What would happen if nations who can only facilitate one or two elite systems could establish a network to develop all kinds of athletes? Are Americans underachieving given our largess? (Nah. Our ultra-elite athletes have little incentive to compete in Olympic sports, but still...)
Look, I'm still gonna use the raw medal count as the reflection of our status in the world (the best). And the symbolism of the wealthiest nations walking away with the most precious medals around their neck is the kind of conscienceless irony that makes the well fed so charming in the first place.
America at its Best or: USA! USA! USA!
Trust me--I know it first hand--Americans can be a pretty despicable lot. We have not suffered our crisis with much rationality. The volume is so loud on this nation's discontent it seems like our tremendous personal liberties and luxuriant lifestyle are somehow both a burden and under threat all at the same time.
But every now and again when we can shut up for two seconds, and it's not about politics and money and guns and chicken sandwiches, we're still the greatest most best awesome country on the planet.
This is an intended byproduct of the Olympic Games. I don't know why our Citius, Altius, Fortius earning more medals than other countries is some signifier of greatness, but it is. These athletes do all of the work themselves, but because they compete under the banner of the United States--and seem genuinely proud to do so--we get to win with them. Athletes around the world are built on similar qualities of hard work and dedication and discipline, but when Americans win we get to idealize these qualities as American qualities.
I was even surprised how much importance I put on representing our country as these games progressed. "Woah. You're reppin' the stars and stripes." is a phrase I barked at the TV screen more times than I expected. Especially during diving. What the hell guys and gals? This is America. I expected America to win gold in every event. I've been writing love sonnets to Destinee Hooker in awe of her superhuman touch with the volleyball, and I was devastated--I mean devastated--when they lost to Brazil. Which is crazy. I've never watched women's volleyball in my life, but they were Americans and I was behind them all the way.
By the way, American ladies completely decimated these Olympics games winning 56 percent of our overall medals and 66 percent of our golds. That's right world. American women are still better, stronger, faster, and hotter than yours.
All of our athletes are Americans, and these games have been a welcome reminder of the character of our very best. An emblem of those things we hold dear. People of every race, color, and creed coming together to achieve a common goal. It's a naive vision, but the sight of a 15 year girl on the gold medal stand, tears in her eyes, singing along with the Star Spangled Banner makes this hope seem a little less far off.
In case my cockeyed patriotism is too much for you to stomach, I do have one lingering fear for this great nation. This Olympics was about England, and one thing is clear, the Brits have embraced not being number one with some real grace. Stiff upper lip and all that. And I'm not talking about sports, I'm talking empire wise. But I think if America's ever not number one, it's over. Total societal collapse because our collective ego can't take the blow. I love this country. USA! USA! USA!
Lochte vs Phelps
I'm not sure if "versus" is the right word, but no one likes Ryan Lochte. After the first night when he won gold and Phelps didn't even medal, I already knew I didn't like this guy. As soon as he opened his mouth, he might as well have said "You know who's really misunderstood? Hitler. Hitler and child murderers," because every word out of his mouth came off as equally despicable. It was hate at first sight.
He was cocky and here to dethrone our beloved Phelps. He makes the dumbest word talk you have ever heard. (How has some Team USA Swim Team PR person not preened you?) And the Ryan Gosling comparison? Puh-lease. When I finished watching Drive I wanted to make that movie go home and watch me have sex. When Lochte got finished doing anything, I just had questions like, "Is English his first language?" and "Those are your abs and you don't immediately evaporate when mentioned in the same breath as Baby Goose?"
And all was right with the Olympic games. We had our homegrown villain and before long it was proven Lochte was a pretender left to dwindle in the shadow of the Phelps era. Then one Saturday night, during the Lochte human interest piece I'm sure NBC aired at least five times, we--Me and Ryan--had a pivotal moment. Ryan Lochte owns grills. Not just a grill, but multiple bejeweled, obnoxious, frivolous pieces of mouth decoration. And in turn, the IOC has banned him from wearing his grillz on the medal stand.
Then it hit me, this poor guy is just a douche.
Does anyone really want to suck so bad? Does anyone really want to spend their life inked with weird tribal crucifix tattoos and wearing flat brimmed baseball caps? Of course not, but the Secret Order of the Douche are like Free Masons. Except their volunteer work is crash courses for women in who you need to date once, and never again...or only date. You know why they are called douches? Because, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, they mysteriously end up in all sorts of vaginas.
After this truth revealed itself, me and Lochte came to understand one another. And in stark contrast, Michael Phelps kind of sucks. Phelps isn't even a douche, he's just this weirdo, ogre mouthed, swimmer guy with humanoid like Merman features. There was even one semifinal where he let Lochte finish in front of him even though he clearly had the race won. It smacked with this sinister big brother, little brother, "I'll let you win, but you'll never beat me," ego trip.
Phelps comes off as this disingenuous boy-king who has been housed inside of his false empire for too long. You know how Phelps strikes me? As the kind of guy who laughs way too long at your jokes. The guy who does all those weird back pats and nut-checks like it's his 100M act-like-a-normal-person stroke. I really admire Phelps as an athlete and as an Olympian, but who do you want to hit the Olympic Village with? The legend who has to go on living, or the dude whose glands secrete such pungent whiffs of douche, it's like gravity for women desperate to make some bad choices.
By all accounts, swimming is the new douchey white guy sport. Across the board. Our lady swimmers are tops, but our boys are...yeesh. I say they take this thing to its logical conclusion and see if they can get the entire US Men's Swim Team on a box of Massengill a'la Wheaties. Sorry Lacrosse, your time is over.
Samuel L Jackson's Olympic Coverage
One alarmingly under reported subplot of the last 17 days has been Samuel L Jackson's Twitter coverage of the XXX Olympiad. Pro-American, often insightful, regularly funny, and always bizarre, Sam Jackson's Olympic tweets have teetered somewhere between American sports jingoism and surrealist performance art.
When SJax emerged late the first Friday night of the Olympiad, I was certain it was a hack. It wasn't just his diligent, almost obsessive coverage of the games, it was his willingness to take swipes at even the most innocuous Twitter responder. Part of what made this exercise in online fan interaction so strange is the way these threads would play out. Usually when a celeb is engaging their Twitter detractors it's an RT with the follower's vitriol in quotes and the celeb's pithy rejoinder on the backside. Instead, Samuel L just replies, but in his replies he moves the commenter's @handle around in the body of the tweet, so it shows up in his feed totally context free.
And then, just when it seemed like this was the longest, most protracted hack of a verified account in Twitter history, this gem emerged.
Speaking of the "f-word" and her many splendors, SJax has this preternatural ability to piece together the most radical derivations of the word possible. He's the Ornette Coleman of "f". Before the Olympics, he had a reported 57 versions of Sir Effington out there, and now, the total must have tripled...
The Agony and The Ecstasy -- A Love of Sport.
These Olympics games--the human element in particular--have resonated with me more than other Olympiad I've lived through. Olympic magnitude occurred to me for the first time. You're watching Super Bowl after Super Bowl after Super Bowl. Four years of supreme dedication played out in centimeters and hundredths of a second. So many athletes will only get this one opportunity. Can you name an elite female gymnast you've seen two Olympics in a row? With the exception of the Romanian gymnast who is 24 years old--and the announcers talk about her like she is 1000 years old--it's unheard of.
Even if a competitor represents the small number of athletes who can compete in multiple Olympics, what about the fourth place finish? The breath separating an athlete and the lifetime achievement of an Olympic medal must weigh a ton. The weight of four more years of training and qualifiers and finding sponsors and the body's natural break down decided by the numbers behind a decimal point.
The agony is profound. The Korean fencer who's hopes for gold were stolen by a clock malfunction. John Orozco's collapse on the pommel horse as his Olympic hopes unraveled. The Canadian Women's soccer team in an epic, total heart crushing loss (...to America. USA! USA! USA!).
Yet the ecstasy is ebullient. The look of tears on Aly Raisman's face as she landed her last tumbling pass to secure team gold. Usain Bolt just...doing "WOW!!" over and over again. Any time any member of team Great Britain won any medal. Watching the flags of so many nations raised in victory and seeing how much it can still mean to represent country above self.
These feelings aren't limited to wins and losses alone. Ariel Hsing--my new role model and 16 year old American table tennis phenom--took the number two seeded player in Olympic table tennis the distance. Every point Ariel scored I yelped and felt my eyes suck into my skull wet around the edges. Ariel lost, but Li Xiaoxia new she'd been in a battle. And it was awesome. Players who just cross the finish line or win their country's only silver medal or set a personal best all comprise the noble spirit of the Olympic games. And as the Springfield town motto reminds us, "A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man."
It's just sports, but that's what makes the Olympics such an affirmation of the magnificent human being. It's struggle. It's triumph. It's the human endeavor to be great. It's sports.
Ahem...it's the Olympics.
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