2008 Olympics
August 11th, 2008
From faithmouse.blogspot.com
The Summer Olympics in China are going on right now. I didn’t watch the opening ceremonies and I probably won’t watch much of the coverage. I hate to get into “back in the good old days”, but Olympic TV ratings are down in the States so it’s not just me. Picture from Faithmouse.
Live coverage when the games are half a world away takes the excitement out of things. For me personally, the Olympics are just different now. American athletes are professionals now. The US Basketball team is filled with NBA superstars, there are no more “amateur” athletes anymore. Even track and field athletes might as well be professionals. Back in the day, the Soviet athlete machine was in full swing, and yet the US amateurs did very well against the professionals that were raised from birth to be Olympians.
There are still incredible personal stories in the Olympics but for me the entire China political crap gets in the way of paying attention to the individual athletes.
China hates US. The only reason they do business with US is for our money, but deep down they have a personal hatred anything American. How about all of those great products we get from China? Lead filled toys for our children, contaminated dog food for our pets and god knows what else we don’t even know about. Every US company has gone to China, bowed deeply and kissed their feet and have looked the other way, not paying attention to the abuses China does to their own people, you think they’re going to care about anyone or anything else?
Even from what I heard, I wouldn’t have liked the news coverage / commentary / analysis of even the opening ceremony. The pandering and the “let’s be nice to China because they’re hosting the games” bleeds from all of the reports.
The US Cycling team wearing masks when they got off the plane having to apologize? The apology was completely unnecessary for one thing and for another was way over the top too much. And it’s only gone downhill from there.
China has gone all out not only to put on a good facade for the games, they are going all out to win and beat US like hiring foreign and even US coaches for their teams. The Old Soviets would be proud.
So, why watch and subject myself to the agony of China gloating, the US pandering and political correctness?
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