Olympics: the good the bad and the truly inane

So I’m an Olympics watcher.  I must admit that while women’s beach volley ball is on I find something else to do with my time.  When basketball is on I switch to a different channel and just check in to see when it’s over.  This year I’ve used the DVR to fast forward through a lot of stuff the just doesn’t interest me.  You know the same people from the same countries getting medals ……..again.

While I don’t begrudge the winners or their countries the accolades that’s not why I watch the Olympics and it’s getting harder every 4 years to find someone or some sport to care about.  I want to see stories like the one about the Irish gymnast who came back from several injuries just to participate in the games.  Was his routine flawless, would he get a medal? No, it was just his moment to shine.  He was living proof that if you want something bad enough you can make it happen.

Then there’s the Malaysian lady who’s 8 month pregnant and in one of the shooting competitions.  The runner with no legs that they finally allowed to compete.  There are countries with one or two athletes who will never see prime time exposure.

While I understand we want to see the athletes of our country do well, the US has over 400 people competing at the games.  There are sports we never see, rowing, sailing, shooting, equestrian events, cycling, and the list goes on and on.  I for one am sick to death of volleyball, beach volleyball, basketball and gymnastics.

One last thought.  Gymnastics provided last night a shining example why I don’t watch it or figure skating in the Olympics anymore.  I just happened to be in the room when this went down so I was kind of stuck until I finally went to bed.  The Japanese man working the pommel horse dang near fell on his head doing the dismount.  That put them in 4th place with Britain getting the Silver and Ukraine receiving the bronze.  But no the Japanese protested. He wasn’t falling he was doing a hand stand  and the score should have been higher.   The sad truth is we all saw it, they replayed it several times because the athlete from Japan was supposed to be perfection in and of himself. Of course the judges knuckled under.  So Britain, the host country got bumped to bronze ( the first team medal in a century and one of the few gymnastic medals as well.) Although if you watch the interchange in the very beginning the Japanese coach has what looks to be money in his hand but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence. No one would really think that could happen in the Olympic Games.

If I cared about the sport of gymnastics I’d be making a formal complaint but I don’t, it’s all about politics within the sport just like Ice Skating. Which is why I’d rather watch curling, shooting or pingpong.  At least in those sports you have to actually perform to the best of your ability. At least it will be that way until someone finds a way to sponsor it, make it sexy or otherwise debase it.  It’s what we do.

Update: I mistakenly named Lithuania as the team bumped from the Bronze, my bad it was Ukraine.  So sorry.

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Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Today 12 people died, their crime?  They went to a midnight showing of Batman.

ABC Brian Ross couldn’t help himself. He was almost gleeful when he could tell George Stephanopolis that James Holmes was a member of a Colorado Tea Party organization.  Of course it was the wrong Jim Holmes.  Mr Homes was a 50 something ex law enforcement officer.  The shooter is a 24 year old ex-PhD student from San Diego, but that didn’t fit the narrative.

The shooter who by all intents and purposes is a loon told the police that he’s the Joker. He booby trapped his apartment with incendiary and chemical traps.  He is a certifiable lunatic.  How would those on the left feel if someone on one of the daily morning shows had come out and said that this guy, James Holmes was a member of the Sierra Club or Greenpeace or Acorn and inferred that because he was a member of that organization everyone in the organization was suspect?  Where were the calls not to rush to judgement as we saw in the Ft. Hood shooting?

Why do we even have to go there?  What earthly use can there be,  to speculate on why someone would perform such a heinous act?  Why is it necessary for us to assign blame before the blood is even dry? Why can we not wait until we know the facts before making a statement of condemnation ?

Because we are lazy, we are impatient and most of all we are arrogant.  We know what is in someone’s mind before they even think it.  We know what a group of people will do because that is what they always do.  Unfortunately for all of us, there are so many people who reinforce stereotypes, that it is increasingly hard to keep an objective view.

In the end though, stupid is still stupid, evil is still evil and tragedy is still tragedy.

12 people died today and there were many who never even paused before they began pointing fingers.  We should be ashamed.

 

Sorry one quick word. A video on Fox asked “Where was God?” during the tragedy.  Where was He?  The same place He always is.  We walked away from Him, He hasn’t gone anywhere.  Amazing isn’t it that when things are good God’s not important.  He can be tossed out of schools and city halls, atheist groups chastise government employees for admitting that they pray for rain (or anything else they might need) but let there be a tragedy and God had better show up or we want to know “where he was.” We are amazing.  Our hubris knows no bounds.

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The Continuing Saga…….Death of a Newspaper

Today our local newspaper printed an AP story about Romney addressing the NAACP.  There was quite the controversy  about that.  Some people opined that Romney and his Mormon faith were too “white” to speak at a black event.  Of course that’s not racist at all, move along, nothing to see here.

But Mr. Romney went anyway.  He knows he’s not going to change many minds there.  He knows that 95% of blacks voted for Obama and probably will again.  Romney also knows that the president of the United States is the president of everyone in those states, not just the members of his party, his religion, his ideology or his supporters.  So he went.

According to our local paper Mr. Romney was not well received.  They booed him because of his promise to defeat Obamacare once elected president.  They murmured and whispered and were agitated just by his being in attendance. What it didn’t tell us was that Romney was cheered by the crowd for his defense of traditional marriage.  That of course was not important enough to be put in the article mostly because it doesn’t fit the authors agenda.  Blacks can’t be against gay marriage, that would be intolerant and we all know that minorities aren’t intolerant.  It’s just we old white guys, we bitter clingers, we breeders that are hate filled, racist and intolerant.

This is why newspapers are dying.  This is why when I look down the street where almost every house had a newspaper on their driveway 20 years ago, there is barely one to be seen. Not because people are too busy, not because they’d rather read it on line, but because they don’t trust what they read to be the whole truth, without agenda, without ideology, without intolerance for those who think differently than the author/editor/publisher/corporation.

“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
Thomas Jefferson

Of course Mr. Jefferson had no idea what the press would become, but then again he distrusted a large federal government.   If he could have seen today he might have suggested we are between a rock and a hard place.  He’d have been right.

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