My blog semi-hiatus continues in favor of watching the winter Olympics, despite the risk to my blood pressure of the intensifying jingoism. The phrase that raised my hackles last night? When discussing the snowboarding half-pipe, which was apparently filled with "American medals and an international flavor." That's right, folks, seems Torino and the other athletes are merely a colorful background to the main point of Americans picking up medals. And not just any medals, of course. The incredulity of the talking heads at how Kostelic seemed happy with the silver medal for the alpine skiing combined, almost as if it were an honor to be there and a thrill just to compete, pretty much said it all for me. And the contortions through which the announcers put themselves to make excuses when something negative happens to an American is embarrassing to the point where I find myself rooting for Bode Miller and Apollo Ohno to continue to screw up. The mentality of "It's the Americans' gold medals to lose because we deserve them by divine right" is proving more tiring than watching curling (which it feels like NBC is only showing ironically since the Americans don't seem very good at it so the coverage makes me nod off). Not to mention it's completely antithetical to the Olympic spirit, but I think I've already mentioned that. Besides, the rules the rest of the world has to follow don't apply to the Empire, do they? Speaking of which, Wanda passes on a very funny edit of a State of the Union speech from a couple years back.
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