Reply #42: NBC does it again...

[Seabiscuit]

All day long the NBC commentators at the Olympics were dead wrong about every event they covered. Why? Because NBC just can't shake the compulsion to politicize the Olympics and turn it into an "America is Number One" embarassment.

One small example: during the women's gymnastics trials when the USA team was up against Romania, after the USA racked up more points early on, then Romania started catching up, one commentator blathered: "As good as the American team is, perhaps they're not that much better than the Romanians." Of course, Romania trounced them in points at the end. And later on China looked like they could make mincemeat out of the awkward, stiff, ungraceful American team. Worse, the American team had one young black woman of Jamaican heritage, yet NBC, while covering the supposed stars of the team, all white, and who all committed numerous flubs, they only showed their black teammate in one event. Why?

A more glaring example: What's with all this crazy hoopla about Michael Phelps? NBC has turned him into this year's media darling - much as they did with Mia Hamm from the American women's soccer team in Australia four years ago. Yet Hamm became a non-factor towards the end. And so will Phelps. NBC somehow put Phelps up for endorsements with American Express, AT&T and VISA, all of whom paid big bucks to run their ads during NBC's Olympic coverage and turning Phelps instantly into a spoiled teenage millionaire.

And who is Phelps? A 19 year old kid with talent who NBC ballyhooed all weekend as the one to win more medals than Mark Spitz, although he was only officially entered in 7 events, and to get him into an 8th, NBC and other "media" laid the pressure on the American swimming coach to bump veteran Gary Hall, Jr. at the last minute, even though Phelps wasn't supposed to swim in the 4X100 meter freestyle relay event, and Hall had better split times this morning than Phelps has ever had. So what happened? While South Africa set a new world record in that event, and Americans Neil Walker and Jason Lezak made up precious time with their third and fourth legs of the race, pulling into second place, Pieter van den Hoogenband of the Netherlands came out of nowhere and beat out Lezak at the finish, pushing the American team into third place.

Phelps now has to swim four more individual races and two more relays. Any one of the South Africans can beat him, Hoogenband proved earlier in the day as well as during the finals that he can beat him, as did Australian Ian Thorpe earlier today, and as did teammates Walker and Lezak during the freestyle relay.

Why can't NBC (or the rest of the American media covering the Olympics for that matter) just report to us what happens at the Olympics instead of working overtime to spoon-feed us mythological over-glorifications of selected American athletes???

And why can't we watch Olympic events in this country featuring other countries competing in events not pre-selected by NBC for American victories without having to watching Telemundo in Spanish (which basically just covers the soccer matches)?

Just venting. :eyes: