Very well then. When the Paralympics start to mean something to broadcasters, advertisers, marketers and merchandisers, then America will get behind Paralympic athletes. Until then, America says screw the Paralympics.
Are you sure?
I put the important word in bold.
I hate to be pedantic but I’m a little hung up on your use of the word “excuse.” What do you mean by “excuse” in this context? A justification? An apology? It begs the question: what, exactly, do you think we are trying to excuse ourselves from?
It’s probably worth noting that for the last two weeks the American news cycle has been just a tad more preoccupied with a different type of competition: the two political party conferences. Compared to that circus the Paralympics is small potatoes.
Am I the only one hearing this in the voice of Joe Pesci?
Does that make it a parargument?
What do you mean ‘we’? Do you speak for all Americans?
I meant an excuse for America not doing as well in the paralympics as in the olympics.
You’re being overly defensive about this, you know.
The Olympic and Paralympic medal tables aren’t really indicative of anything. A country can have a respectable medal showing in the Olympics even if all it sends is a swimming team. I suppose the performance of the US in the Paralympics relative to its Olympic dominance is indicative of something, but I can’t imagine what.
Even if there’s less public interest in the US, it’s not as though disabled people would be less interested. Hell, we might just have a lower rate of paraplegia and amputation because we have such good medicine (at least at the top of the scale).
If you’re going to be pedantic, you shouldn’t use “begs the question” incorrectly. 
That argument might fly if the Paralympics happened to be a single sport (like soccer) that the US simply doesn’t care enough about to play or attempt to dominate in – it isn’t. (although, to be fair, your soccer team is actually pretty handy, even if you, as a nation, don’t much care for it as a sport).
Anyhow, the point is that the Paralympics is pretty much ALL the same sports that the US competed in (very strongly, even dominantly) throughout the main Olympics, so it should not be a matter of whether the specific sport itself is of interest to the nation – clearly it is. So the question arises, why is it when these particular people compete in this particular competition, does the same exciting sport from several weeks ago suddenly become uninteresting or unworthy of being watched?
To simplify, let’s just look at athletics (track & field) and swimming, two traditionally strong areas for the US in the main games (and the source of most of the US medal in the 2012 paralympics). All the distance running events are the same. All the field throwing or jumping events are the same. All the swimming strokes used and distances swam in races are the same. So why does the interest wane for the Paralympics, when it is still international competition at the very highest level? It’s a legitimate question, and shouldn’t be dismissed so flippantly.
The wider question then is, what’s stopping the broadcasters in the US now from being interested in the Paralympic stars? The UK have embraced their medal winners in much the same way as they did those who won medals in the main games – many are now household names – so why is this not the same in the US? Pop quiz – How many here, without googling – know exactly who Trischa Zorn is? Or, from 2012 - Jessica Long? Kelley Becherer? If you’re a fan of swimming at any level then you really should.
That few people gives a damn about the Paralympics. Few people outside the USA gives a hoot about the Olympics either for that matter. Now if we were talking football then we’d have something interesting to talk about. But I don’t think there is a Parafootball World Cup. There’s a Women’s football World Cup though. Nobody gives a damn about that either.
I never said I was good at being pedantic!
I have to disagree with my fellow British dopers about the the paralympics having been just as big as the olympics. You could just about say they were this time, in very special circumstances, but for the other ones I remember (which admittedly only goes back to Barcelona) they were significantly less big. In fact I can barely remember anything about the Beijing ones!
That said usually the olympics themselves aren’t very big either, at least compared to say the world cup.
The Olympics are kind of a strange animal. Every four years Americans go crazy over swimming, gymnastics and various track & field events that they pay very little attention to in-between the Olympics themselves. Maybe after spending two weeks being overly exited about sports they’re not normally interested in Americans have just had enough.
Or, and I find this to be more likely, the lack of interest stems from most Americans not wanting to sit down and watch a bunch of amputees, people with cerebral palsy or those in wheelchairs compete.
Neither of those explains why Americans medal less than other countries though. The U.S. Olympic Committee does spend less on Paralympic athletes than they do Olympic athletes. Maybe American Paralympic athletes just don’t have as good a training program as some other countries.
I think a better question to ask is, does anybody have any idea why the Paralympics are pretty much ignored in the USA?
I have one theory; in the USA, people hear “Paralympics” and think “Special Olympics,” where the real emphasis isn’t on winning, and thus doesn’t do as well in terms of being a spectator sport. I am not sure that the Special Olympics have as much “brand recognition” in other countries.
I think the closest anybody in the USA has come to making Paralympic events “popular with the masses” was the TV series Friday Night Lights, where one storyline involved a character trying to make the national Wheelchair Rugby (aka “Murderball”) team for the 2008 Paralympics. The WGA strike that crippled that show’s second season didn’t do the sport any favors.
One thing’s already been mentioned: The Paralympics are at the same time as the political conventions, and the latter takes up a lot of news bandwidth.
I was originally thinking this was a coincidence this year, but thinking about it a little more, I see that this must be a ‘scheduling clash’ every time around, which certainly affects things from a popularising perspective. Shame really.
I came back to post a link to this story - I was somewhat surprised to read that not a single minute of the Paralympics was broadcast live in the US by host broadcaster NBC (compared to over 400 hours of coverage by Channel 4 in the UK). And from the link:
So getting better, albeit slowly. Maybe one Oscar-sized superstar is all that is needed to kickstart the interest. 
Oh no, it’s definitely not as big as the olympics - I don’t think anyone said that. But they are fairly big - I certainly noticed them mentioned on the news last time.
Yes, every four years the Paralympics and the political conventions both come right after the main Olympic games. In the US, the political conventions are considered far more important, even though they are actually much less important than they used to be.