...who feels like cheering for Team USA in the Olympics is a bit like cheering when Wal-Mart opens another Superstore, or Exxon's profit margins rise, or Paris Hilton gets cosmetic surgery, or NFL players get a $50,000 Pro Bowl bonus?
I don't have hard numbers, but certainly we spend more per olympic athlete than almost anyone, and as a country we've got the most discretionary time of anyone in the world. Sure, Americans dominated the men's and women's snowboarding half-pipe, we invented the freakin' sport for crying out loud. Think that random 22-year-old woman living with her family in Nepal on $65 per year has time to hit the Himalayas for snowboarding practice in between working the 16-hour shift at the sweat shop and taking care of her kids?
Okay, so I admit, once the games are on and I'm sitting in front of the t.v, I'm cheering for the red-white-and-blue as much as the next capitalist pig. But when I stop to think about it, I can't help feeling a little guilty.
4 comments:
I'm with you man.
And we are surprised when the summer games cancel softball and baseball?
Where is the outcry to add cricket? Oh, that's right it's only popular outside the U.S.
What's next...American Football for the next summer games?
I lost my olympic jones in 92 (dream team?)
Couldn't agree with you more, Alex (and Bart). It's beautiful and heart-warming and all to hear the national anthem played after an event, it's great to see the tears of triumph, but still... it tends to leave me feeling a little on the slimy side.
Although I have to say my favorite moment of the olympics thus far (which made me seriously question the influence our country has), was the disco and 80s throwback music that played in the opening ceremonies. I kept thinking that it must be every athlete's dream to walk into the Torino games to "Play that Funky Music White Boy". Way to treasure the Italian culture. Oh wait...
I'm going to be the odd man out here: I love cheering for the US of A and am not put off by $$$ spent. In part because from what I remember the US gov't doesn't spend as much money on Olympics as other governments do.
That isn't to say that US Olympians don't get more money, I'm sure they do. It's just that folks like Home Depot, VISA, McDonald's, Burton, UPS, FedEx, you know, those "proud olymic sponsors," spend money on the folks.
So for me, the fact (undemonstrated, but I'll take it as a given) that US Olympians have more money is a factor of decisions we've made (or participate in) as a Liberal Democratic Free Market system, not because the US is somehow less "pure" for the sport or more "decadent" as a country. It's because of this Free Market system that we have successful companies who are able to give money away to these Olympians. (I mean, seriously, who is going to give a rip about whether Nike supports the Curling Teams? But they do anyway. I think that's cool.)
That being said, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that most US Olympians are not, in fact, rolling in the money. Last night I was watching and the commentator said that the US Olympian's family had to have bake sales to raise money for them to be able to afford to travel to see their son compete.
We see folks like Bodie Miller and think every one has a supercalifragilistic sponsorship but that's really not the case.
I'm off to sing the Star Spangled Banner!
I just don't really like the winter olympucs, and I kind of feel like most of the athletes are pros in the sports that they are playing in, and I really miss the days where college b-ball players represented the US in the olympcs (did I say I didn't really like the winter games).
Mad props to GREENSBORO's JOEY CHEEK, gold medalist.
And to that guy on American Idol from McLeansville (home of Ray Crompton, very near Gso)
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