You've got to be kidding me. If there is a deer of unity, it bolted a long time ago. What you are describing is The Old Olympics, the ones that were about athleticism, international friendship and camaraderie through sporting competition, the striving to be the best in the world. It was a wonderful thing for the 100 or so years that it l…
You've got to be kidding me. If there is a deer of unity, it bolted a long time ago. What you are describing is The Old Olympics, the ones that were about athleticism, international friendship and camaraderie through sporting competition, the striving to be the best in the world. It was a wonderful thing for the 100 or so years that it lasted. Sometime in the last 20 years as our society has degraded, so have the Olympics. The Paris Olympics may be the final stake in the heart of this tradition, with an opening ceremony that had nothing to do with athletics or cross-national friendship and everything to do with pushing a shocking and transgressive agenda to "épater les bourgeois." I am an old school liberal and an atheist and I was still disgusted by the opening. More fundamentally shocking, though, is the continued dereliction of duty on the IOC's part to make women's sports women-only so that it is fair and safe for women. I did not watch these Olympics, nor would I ever "rewatch" them. Doing so would not unite anyone. It was designed to drive us further apart, in my opinion. It is no longer family-friendly or free from identity politics.
I was born in 1969 and I adored the Olympics. No one ever had to "make me" watch the Olympics. I loved figure-skating, gymnastics, track and field, and many other events. I fell in love with Olga Korbut in 1972 and was outraged at first in 1976 that Nadia Comaneci was beating her (though I fell in love with Nadia by the end as well.) I was gaga over Bruce Jenner. I would start feeling excited about them weeks before they started.
I did get a bit annoyed sometimes in 80s and 90s when NBC started playing up the "sob story" angles, i.e., every event had to have one athlete who had experienced a personal tragedy and we'd hear long, violin-playing segments about how they're "winning this one for their dead grandma/dog/babysitter" or that they had been a prisoner of war (okay, I'm making this one up), but it was always something that had absolutely nothing to do with athletics that was supposed to ratchet up our emotions when watching the shot put or whatever they were doing. To me it felt like NBC no longer trusted the audience to appreciate the real human drama of the competition in front of us, as if we needed "enhancers."
NBC also focused way too much on US athletes to the exclusion of other countries and this would drive me up a wall. I want to hear interviews with the greatest athletes in the world in each sport, regardless of whether they come from my own country. So after a race where the US didn't win a medal the NBC reporters would rush over to interview the American who came in 7th or 8th.
Those annoyances are nothing compared with the heart-sinking feeling these Olympics gave me. They are like the culmination of 30 years of culture wars all in one horrific event.
You've got to be kidding me. If there is a deer of unity, it bolted a long time ago. What you are describing is The Old Olympics, the ones that were about athleticism, international friendship and camaraderie through sporting competition, the striving to be the best in the world. It was a wonderful thing for the 100 or so years that it lasted. Sometime in the last 20 years as our society has degraded, so have the Olympics. The Paris Olympics may be the final stake in the heart of this tradition, with an opening ceremony that had nothing to do with athletics or cross-national friendship and everything to do with pushing a shocking and transgressive agenda to "épater les bourgeois." I am an old school liberal and an atheist and I was still disgusted by the opening. More fundamentally shocking, though, is the continued dereliction of duty on the IOC's part to make women's sports women-only so that it is fair and safe for women. I did not watch these Olympics, nor would I ever "rewatch" them. Doing so would not unite anyone. It was designed to drive us further apart, in my opinion. It is no longer family-friendly or free from identity politics.
I was born in 1969 and I adored the Olympics. No one ever had to "make me" watch the Olympics. I loved figure-skating, gymnastics, track and field, and many other events. I fell in love with Olga Korbut in 1972 and was outraged at first in 1976 that Nadia Comaneci was beating her (though I fell in love with Nadia by the end as well.) I was gaga over Bruce Jenner. I would start feeling excited about them weeks before they started.
I did get a bit annoyed sometimes in 80s and 90s when NBC started playing up the "sob story" angles, i.e., every event had to have one athlete who had experienced a personal tragedy and we'd hear long, violin-playing segments about how they're "winning this one for their dead grandma/dog/babysitter" or that they had been a prisoner of war (okay, I'm making this one up), but it was always something that had absolutely nothing to do with athletics that was supposed to ratchet up our emotions when watching the shot put or whatever they were doing. To me it felt like NBC no longer trusted the audience to appreciate the real human drama of the competition in front of us, as if we needed "enhancers."
NBC also focused way too much on US athletes to the exclusion of other countries and this would drive me up a wall. I want to hear interviews with the greatest athletes in the world in each sport, regardless of whether they come from my own country. So after a race where the US didn't win a medal the NBC reporters would rush over to interview the American who came in 7th or 8th.
Those annoyances are nothing compared with the heart-sinking feeling these Olympics gave me. They are like the culmination of 30 years of culture wars all in one horrific event.