Sunday, February 12, 2006

The (YAWN!!) Olympics

So, the Winter Olympics started on Friday.
To quote a certain painfully unfunny, lasagna eating comic strip cat: "Big fat, hairy deal!"
As far as I'm concerned, the Olympics are just a two week interruption in some of my favorite shows. And don't you think it's kind of a cheap trick for NBC to air an episode of Will & Grace ending with "To Be Continued..." then leave you hanging for two weeks while they waste airtime on something nobody cares about.
Truth is, nobody here in America does give half a crap about the Olympics anymore, except maybe the athletes, and they haven't since the end of the Cold War. That was the real point of the whole thing for Americans. The "Miracle On Ice" of 198o's Winter Games wouldn't have been such a miracle if it had been the Canadian hockey team we beat for the Gold medal. The athletic competition stood in for the war that we were afraid to get into with the Soviet Union lest the conflict go nuclear and devastate the whole planet. But with the USSR gone, there's really no reason to give a damn anymore. Beating the Jamaican bobsled team just doesn't give you the same rush, y'know

1 comment:

Ray "!!" Tomczak said...

Yes, you're more of a sports fan than me--but that doesn't invalidate my point, which is that the games were about a lot more than just the games during the Cold War years and have since lost that symbolic significance for the American people.