The Ugly American

Popeye

Well-Known Member
Joined
Sep 3, 2007
Messages
3,023
Location
Washington state
While America lost the gold medal count to China, apparently it's not easy to accept defeat. Here's an interesting comment on the ugly side of the US in Beijing.


There were not many journalists from non-combatant nations present in the remote corner of Beijing where Japan played the US in the Olympic women’s softball final on Thursday night.

But a Scandinavian sat opposite me in the press room afterwards. We exchanged conspiratorial smiles: the Americans had lost and that always goes down well with everyone else at the Olympics.

In the main stadium around the same time, two US relay teams dropped the baton and crashed out of events they might have won. The smiles there, I understand, were less furtive.

American unpopularity at the Olympics is hardly new. It is a natural response to a great and sometimes overweening power. But it has grown: many sports journalists remember the we-know-bestism that pervaded the badly run Atlanta games in 1996; and the effect of George W. Bush’s presidency on America’s global standing is well-attested.

My own theory is that the US has never quite grasped the give-and-take character of world sport. Countries devoted to soccer, cricket and rugby play regular international fixtures; they win some and lose some, and learn to live with that. The biggest US sports (American football, baseball, basketball) are particularly their own and primarily domestic. Neither their athletes nor spectators are well-prepared for the Olympics.

Others stand aghast as they try to follow the logic of NBC, the television network that is the Olympics’ chief paymaster. It is basking in a ratings triumph for these games, so I suppose they are not interested in bleats from me. The fact remains that they declined to show live both the opening ceremony and the 100 metres, the two seminal moments of the games. The desperate had to turn to the internet. Meanwhile, the remotest reaches of the world were sharing the experience.

There have also been a couple of unfortunate incidents here. The protest by the US team that cost Churandy Martina of the Netherlands Antilles his silver medal in the 200 metres was seen by some, perhaps unfairly, as bullying of a small nation. There was also the bizarre election scandalette in the poll among competitors for athlete-representatives to the International Olympic Committee. The US tried to ensure victory for its candidate, Julie Foudy, by offering team members a $50 (€34, £27) shopping voucher if they voted.

The consolation for Americans is that they believe they are triumphant.
The medals table is unofficial and, indeed, frowned on by the Olympic Charter, which insists the games are “between athletes . . . and not between countries”. Nonetheless, its format is well established: the number of golds decides the placings, with minor medals used to settle ties. At least, it is well established outside the US.

The American media add up the golds, silvers and bronzes, giving them equal weighting, which is ludicrous. By an amazing coincidence, this puts the Americans on top, well ahead of China. The normal method has the US far behind.
But guess which way plays better in Peoria?

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0df0d4b8-7057-11dd-b514-0000779fd18c.html?nclick_check=1
 
Werbung:
Back
Top