The Olympics

[suppressing yawn]

If you're looking for great Olympic coverage, you sure as hell won't find it here. I know, I know. You haven't heard such a stunning endorsement since Denny Hastert said Alan Keyes made a great Illinois Senatorial candidate because a 70-year-old farmer nobody knows decided his health was too poor to run.

But seriously, it's just hard to get rah-rah excited about the Olympics for a number of reasons: the rampant corruption that still exists (bullshit aside), the fact that the way the media in the US covers the Olympics is to all but pretend no other country participates, that the Olympics were originally started to test both the mind and the body (yet most Olympic athletes today seem challenged to name the three colors in the American flag), that most of the folks participating come from or were granted privilege to devote their lives to practice (most of us have to work), and the syrupy, crappy stories you have to sit through.

What really turned me off this year was NBC's purple prose about the teams from Afghanistan and Iraq. They acted like it was just American prowess that restored their countries to wonderful operation so these athletes could participate (as in, "Before the US arrived, this Afghan woman would have been forced to wear a birka"). Go to Afghanistan. Most women TODAY have to wear birkas. The Taliban and warlords are in control of most of the country.