One thing I absolutely hate about US coverage of the Olympics is the obligatory back stories of every athlete - and even that wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t find it mandatory to dredge out every sob story aspect and milk it to death.
I remember one year that I seriously doubted that a single athlete did NOT have parents eaten by wolves, overcome some major debilitating disease, was written off as dead or paralyzed by teams of doctors and had to watch their beloved dog Beanie get run over by a truck when they were five years old.
I don’t believe any other country in the world feels obligated to bring you to tears before watching an athlete compete in an event.
And even if it isn’t a total sob story, any other tidbit of interest will be repeated over and over and over again. For instance, is there anyone in the entire USA who doesn’t know that Dara Torres is a 41 year old mother; she is 41; she is the oldest swimmer; she is a mother; she is over four decades old; four score and one year ago…“Hey Matt Lauer, how old is Dara Torres?” Say it again please, as I believe there is a woman in Minot, N. Dakota who didn’t hear you say it the first 368 times!
So get out those hankies, the parade of sob stories begins tonight!
You have taken my Olympic backstory virginity. And I didn’t get a movie or dinner.
Christ, not even a swig of vodka in the back seat before the groping.
This might make for a good bingo game. Fill in each square with “troubled sibling,” “early injury,” “learning disability,” etc.
I mean, that would be fun for those of you who can stand to watch the coverage.
I predict at least one sob story is going to include ADD.
Well, if it makes you feel any better, Australia is pretty much as bad as the US when it comes to this sort of stuff.
In fact, i think Australia is, if possible, even worse than the United States at relentless nationalism and pathos-ridden drivel in its Olympic coverage. It really is embarrassing and painful to watch.
The only sob story I need to see is the Sudanese kid carrying the US flag in Beijing. Yeah, nice floor show China, but you motherfuckers are still supporting genocide and no amount of forced-march choreography with shiny LED’s is going to change that.
That’s the only way I can get through the Olympic coverage.
Just once, I’d like them to profile an athlete who had a nice, boring, healthy upbringing in a nice, boring, middle class family with two parents, no injuries or bankruptcies, no tragedy…just hard work and talent, and some brothers and sisters with their own interests that the parents also paid attention to, and no families torn apart to go live in a training camp somewhere.
I’m not going to go to any extreme lengths - but I’m thinking of seeing how long I can go without turning the Games on. The coverage always pisses me off so much. I imagine sometime the middle of next week I’ll be vegging and will end of taking advantage of myself, but we’ll see. Plenty of books and magazines to read, and plenty of re-run sitcoms on TVLand!
I’ll watch some. The local paper printed a list of what sports will be on what channel at what time, and I’ll select out what I might like to watch. But if they start on the sob stories, my TV’ll be back on digital music so fast it’ll make your head swim.
Kttenblue - I was reading the story of one of our equestrian competitors. ACtually, I was reading about her horse, but she got in there, too. Started riding on borrowed ponies, mucked stables to ride. Became a firefighter as an adult. Bought a $2500 pack horse (yeah, like on camping trips) because she knew he had a jumper in his bloodline. Complete retraining - he’d been off the TB race track before he was a pack animal - and now they’re an Olympic partnership. Very normal. Although she did have a horse injury itself badly and had to be put down last year.
Look, the Olympics haven’t been a true SPORTS event in the U.S. since 1972.
In 1972, millions of rich white girls in the U.S. fell in love with Olga Korbut. Ever since, the Olympics have been aimed at FEMALE viewers, not men.
Look at the commercials- do you see the kind of ads you’d see during a NASCAR race or an SEC football game (beer, pickup trucks, etc.)?
The Olympics today aren’t an ESPN program. They’re a Lifetime Network show with sweat. The soap operatic profiles are aimed at female viewers. Cause let’s face it, men don’t give a rat’s ass whether LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony had happy childhoods!
Okay, yeah, the melodramatic profiles are aimed at people who like that kind of thing.
But what the heck does that have to do with women? And why does the fact that the Olympics are marketed to women, if they are, mean it’s not a real sports event?
I am a woman and I hate the melodramatic profiles. I just want to watch people run or swim or whatever the event is.
Like I’ve mentioned in other threads, if you get away from the main NBC coverage, you can actually see the events and not hear sob stories. No one overcame autism during the boxing events on CNBC this morning.
