Olympic Fever
Have you found yourself yelling at the T.V. lately, cheering on champions of international justice hitting bricks with brooms? Do you think that people sliding on their backsides down icey tracks will generate world peace? Congratulations! You have a Olympic Fever.
Olympic Fever is a disease. As Kyle Smith outlines in his column today in the Wall Street Journal, the Olympics are not a noble ceremony with a history of uniting the globe. On the contrary, a look at Games past shows them to be filled with racism, terrorism, corruption and other assorted hatred.
If you have Olympic Fever you probably think it matters who can ski down a hill faster. But really what does this prove? Does it show that the athlete and thereby their nation is more virtuous than any other? I really don't think so. Does the performance of a country's athletes prove the relative genetic superiority of its citizens? That was the idea of the Nazis in 1936.
Even if a person wins one of those gold medals (composed mostly of silver) the glory of the victory is degraded by the long track record of cheating and bribery. The use of drugs and avoidance of getting busted has been a key component of Olympics strategy for more than a hundred years. Did you think that the obvious cheating at the 2002 figure skating judging was a new phenomenom? It wasn't.
I don't want to paraphrase Mr. Smith's article so I won't list off all his examples of dishonesty. I encourage you all to read his article for a detailed account of past scandals.
Mr. Smith appeared today on the Michael Medved Show to talk about his article and Mr. Medved brought up another interesting Olympic failure. I had always thought that the Olympics was a big money maker but according to facts Mr. Medved cited the Games are actually a big money loser for their host cities. Athens and Atlanta being recent examples of cities that were damaged economically by their Olympic spending.
So in the final balance to we get something out of all the money, time and attention that is poured into the Olympics or are its benefits as mythical as the gods of Mount Olympus for whom the ancient counterparts of the current games were performed? I think that when all the evidence is examined it is clear that we should end the farce and spend the worlds energy elsewhere.
12 Comments:
Rabenstranger, I dub thee. Arise! Sir Olympic Scrooge.
No, I understand what you are saying, the Olympics is a bust for world harmony and whatever junk like that, and is exploited for commercialism, but I just like watching the sports.
Just think, it would take a measurable amount of oomph out of the sports world if there were no gold medals to work for, no Olympic ceremony to make a big fuss if you won...
I could just be an idealist, (which is more than likely) but I like the Olympics.
While I enjoy the olympics, I'm generally not "Glued to the Screen" while they are going on. I just catch up on them here and there, and watch the opening ceremony(which dissapointingly gets worse, and worse every year!)
So it is quite obvious you don't really enjoy the olympics, but what sport do you like?
AAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!! I have no TV. This is one thing on TV I would absolutely love to watch. :(
Having no TV is almost as messed up as not having your own computer. I disagree with Rabenstrange purely because world championship half-pipe snowboarding is just plain cool. It's even better in the Olymipics than in the X-Games, even though they've got cooler uniforms and background music than in the Olympics. If they got rid of stupid 'sports' like figure skating, in favor of much cooler sports like curling and biathalon, I'd watch more of the Olympics.
I love the Olympics and find myself glued to the TV watching them every night.
The Olympics is the greatest assemblage of world athletes. It is an incredible competition: Russia vs. US (hockey), Russia vs. anyone else ( ice skating), and Sweden and Norway vs. US and Canada (luge and snow boarding). Even Olympic snowboarding and skiing is cool.
The Olympics take determination, courage, and perserverance. The glorious come-backs and the over-all joy of victory are all wrapped up into these world sports.
Yes, there has been cheating in the past, like the 2002 ice skating incident. But steps are always taken to prevent such cheating ( ie. the new judging system)
Yes! Snowboarding...:) I plan on getting a laptop once I start school.
If you listen to NPR or something like that on the radio you'd know that there's no way that the greatest athletes in the world are at the Olympics since most of the athletes there are white. Supposedly all inteligent people know that the only reason that blacks don't make up 99% of the athletes in the Winter Olympics is because the games are racist. But then, those people should be shot and I'd be glad to do it, but since that is generally frowned upon, and good ammo is expensive, they'll live to complain about stuff another day.
I watched most of the snowboarding and curling events and that's about it, I had to do it on Canadian TV since NBC doesn't show entire competitions if they're more than a few minutes long except for figure skating and hockey.
Well, this ius the WINTER Olympics, so the Africans of Ethiopia, Ghana, South Africa, Nigeria, etc.. can't be expected to show up in full force. The Summer Olympics is a different stroy.
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we don't have regular tv so we've been missing the olympics. but neemund, i always loved the skating part most!
blessings!
lisa
I haven't watched much. I didn't even see the opening serimony. They're always playing figure skating or spead skating when I look. I'm more of a skeleton, luge, curling, almost anything with snowboards, type of person. Summer olymics are better.
Yeah, where would the people from Africa or wherever practice. That reminds me of that movie "Cool Runnings". I like that one! :)
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