Even knowing it is coming, I am amazed every four years when the Olympics roll around and the missus becomes a rabid sports fan.
Between the Olympics my wife’s sports viewing wouldn’t fill a day. She might watch at a couple of Titans’ games each year, maybe go to a couple of Blue Raiders games and watch a couple of pro tennis matches.
That’s it. And, the Titans’ viewing will be casual, the Raiders’ attendance mostly social.
She just isn’t a sports fan.
Until the Olympics.
Then, she becomes an expert.
Or as much of an expert as television can make a viewer.
And, that’s pretty good.
With all the cable channels now, I suspect, without enough interest to actually check, an Olympics’ fan can pretty much watch the games 24 hours a day.
And TV does a good job covering the Olympics, going beyond the competition to tell the incredible individual stories behind the running, swimming and dribbling.
And, the missus eats it all up.
Because of my job, I’m usually the one in the household who has an idea of what’s going on, but for the next couple of weeks the missus will be our household expert on the Olympics.
Now she won’t know where Farve is now playing, or who leads the National League East, or where Kobe might be going.
But, ask her an Olympics question and she will be all over it.
I’ll be the one in the kitchen cooking dinner, well, taking it out of the pickup bags.
•••
While I have watched a little of the Olympics, especially beach volleyball which just amazes me and probably you too if you’ve ever tried to hop around in sand, I don’t really get into the games.
On the other hand, most other channels on TV are showing nothing, not even the old Discovery and History standbys, and I need the noise.
And, I especially don’t care for these games because I detest the IOC’s decision to let China be host.
While the Olympics are supposed to be above politics (yeah, right, ask South Africa, Taiwan and on and on), certain principles should apply.
A brutally repressive regime like China’s, allegedly a communistic state but one actually ruled by a gang of dictators, shouldn’t be allowed to host the games for really basic principles.
Like being unable to provide a reasonably healthy environment for the world-class athletes who are the very reason for the Games.
When the Games open under a pall of smog, yep, real live pollution that can be seen clearly with the naked eye, it’s obvious the Olympics are in the wrong place.
That smog was still around in a country that boasts 17 of the 20 top worst polluted cities in the world can hardly be a surprise to the Olympic selection committee.
And, how much worse would it have been if the Chinese ruling thugs hadn’t banned most cars in Beijing and run out all migrants and homeless people, the latter a growing group as longtime farmers and villagers are simply run off ancestral property to make room for the Chinese economic juggernaut, the producer of vast amounts of tainted pet food and lead-painted children’s toys.
Another basic should be the host country being secure enough with its own peoples and relationships with other countries and groups that draconian censorship is not required of the visiting world media.
China’s iron-fisted rulers don’t seem to understand that while their people may be ignorant of the real world and their leaders’ mistreatment of various of its own peoples and other places, the rest of the world knows the truth.
China’s decision to force a bell-voiced little girl to hide as she sang a beautiful song at the opening ceremonies while a “cuter” child mouthed the words for world television audience clearly identifies China’s dictators as deceitful, duplicitous and cruel.
The world must deal with and accommodate as necessary with its biggest nation, but it should not be rewarded and recognized with something special as the Olympics are supposed to be.
•••
You wonder if Michael Phelps would pass a DNA test as 100 percent human? I think he’s at least 10 percent dolphin.
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