Skip to main content

It Smells like Olympic Spirit, Part II

By



The only thing I can think of is that Donald Trump was determined not to be upstaged by the Olympics, flying off the handle in public so that the media would continue to focus on him during this long fortnight.  Thank God Usain Bolt came along to steal the thunder!

Even more absurd is all this attention being given Ryan Lochte and three other American swimmers who were apparently robbed at gunpoint, which led to Lochte "sneaking" out of Brazil to avoid questioning by the Rio police.  I suppose it was the part where the swimmers claimed the robbers were dressed as police officers that pissed off the Rio police.  Can't say that I blame them.  A rather ignominious end for Lochte, who came up well short of expectations in the pool and out.

It's been a weird Olympics with so much focus on all the wrong things, like Al Trautwig questioning Simon Biles relations, and all that faux controversy over Gabby Douglas not properly saluting the flag when the gymnastics girls won gold in the team competition.  Not to mention the endless sniping of Russian athletes over doping, when America's own Justin Gatlin was allowed to compete despite past doping suspensions himself.  Like Efimova, Gatlin had to settle for silver in his premier event.  So, obviously drugs failed.

Then came the infamous "dive" in the 400 meter race.  If it had been six-time Olympic medalist Allyson Felix diving across the line for gold, everyone would have been saying how she sacrificed her body for a victory, but because it was first-time medalist Bahamian Shaunae Miller, she somehow cheated.

There were also the charges of sexism, where women athletes were not given the respect they deserved.  This was most apparent in all the attention given the women beach volleyball players for either wearing too little or too much clothes.

What makes the Olympics great is that it brings the world together for two weeks in a spirit of fellowship and competition.  But, rather than suppress our nationalistic urges and our petty conceits, we put them on full display.  You see this fellowship among the athletes, like that great picture of Usain Bolt and Andre De Grasse crossing the semi-final of the 200 meter race with big smiles on their faces.  This to me personifies what the Olympics are all about.

What's also lost is that Rio pulled off the Olympics when everyone thought Brazil was going to fail "bigly."  Sure, there were some strange moments like the green diving pool, but this turned out to be a simple matter of chemistry not dirty water.  On the whole, this has been a great Olympics and Rio should be proud of itself, as we should be proud of all the great accomplishments at these Games, not just those of our athletes.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
230 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more

The Searchers

By
You are invited to join us in a discussion of  The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl.  The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics'  Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts.  The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories.  The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...
123 comments
Read more