I've been meaning to post this for a while, but other news and the Olympics got in the way. But it's time to finally get around to it.
I don’t want to give away what is basically the “punch line” of it, so I’ll dance around it a bit. This is an exchange that a fellow named Mark Joseph Stern posted on his Twitter feed. It began when he posted something about an article that appeared in Slate. Stern headed the full exchange, “It finally happened,” but for technical reasons I couldn’t include that part. And because of that, it requires a bit of explanation to be fully clear what's going on -- Reading from the top down, you'll see Stern first describe the article in Slate, which is about abortion and an undocumented teenage girl. Then he explains his point in more detail to someone who had replied and taken great offense. This correspondent, a fellow named Mark Winterhouse, jumps back in angrily and...well, you'll see what follows when a third person jumps in. Be forewarned that there is R-rated language at one point, but as becomes clear, it's one of those times when it pretty much fits. What I like about this full exchange is that I think it may be the quintessential example of the part of social media where people bury their head to ONLY see what they want and choose to lash out and attack in absolutely total ignorance. Which, in turn, in some ways explains the election of Trump...
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We watch the Olympics all day so you don't have to. We return to the eponymous bobsledding, but this time the women's side for the two-person event. One of the more odd stories of the games harkens back to grade school, when the spoiled bully might say at a pick-up game when not getting his way, "It's my football and I'm taking it home." And it conjures up, as well, the famous unexpected Jamaican Bobsled Team, which had the movie, Cool Runnings, made about it. This tale concerns the Jamaican Bobsled Team, as well, 30 years later, though the women's team. The other day, they demoted the team's coach Sandra Kiriasis, and she got upset that this removed his access to the competition. And so she said, "It's my bobsled, so I'm taking it home." Really. It wasn't precisely hers, but she had signed for it. You see, given that bobsledding isn't the biggest sport on the Caribbean island, they did own a bobsled, let alone have a backup like most teams. They rented theirs. And the coach had been the one who rented it. And took it back. Jamaica probably have fought the action -- Kiriasis was acting as an agent for the country -- but time was more important, and there wasn't any. What happened is that the Jamaican brewing company, Red Stripe, heard about this and sent out a tweet to the team,offered to buy one for them. Again, really. Actually, the story isn't even that easy. First, the company didn't know how much a sled was and had to check it out before making the offer. (It's about $50,000.) And they had to check that it wouldn't break any Olympic rules against athletes promoting products during the games. (It doesn't. But while an understandable rules, it's pretty odd given how much promotion of products occurs before and during the games. I suppose that if an athlete makes an ad before the games, that's okay even if it doesn't run until during. Though exactly why "during" is so much worse than "before," I don't know -- or why its okay for a clothing manufacturer to promote its logo on team clothes, but then who knows what the rule exactly is. But I digress.) A bigger challenge was that the Jamaican team wasn't able to send a Direct Message to Red Stripe. And so, they sent a reply tweet explaining that. The company tweeted again with a phone number to call...and all's well. They actually bought the same sled and wired the money four days ago. And the team had its first run this morning. And another women's bobsled story is that there is now a Nigerian Bobsled Team. But making that all the more nice, at least for professional basketball fans, is that the uncle of the team's pilot, Seun Adigun, is former NBA Hall of Famer Hakeem Olajuwon. And you thought it was just bobsledding and could be overlooked! Tosh. And the four-man competition of Olympic Dreams is still to come... I've grown to really enjoy biathlon, in part because it's such an odd but weirdly-understandable combination of skills, but also because the competition tends to be so strong and often comes down to the wire after such exhausting efforts. And today's was an added treat for being a bit off-beat -- not just a relay, but mixed relay. The Slovakia team was in the running for a medal, but got knocked at the first break for shooting -- their athlete missed all five shots. When that happens, you have to stop using the rifle's magazine and have to manually load bullets one-by-one. And two of those three shots were missed. So, the penalties were devastating. The race was close to the final tag-off, but the French team had Martin Fourcade running their last leg, the man who had just won a Gold Medal in that photo finish days earlier. He started 25 seconds behind, but won running away. Still, being biathlon, there was a near-photo finish for the Bronze, with Italy getting it by .4 seconds -- and even that was more exciting, because it got challenged by the Germans, claiming they'd been cut off with 30 meters to go. But the result held up. By the way, I've noted how NBC's cross-country analyst Chad Salmela gets maniacal when a race gets active -- and he did so here, but it was the play-by-play announcer Steve Schlanger who went a bit crazed during the race a few times. Most notably, it showed up once after an exciting shooting break when he shouted out, "Biathlon, it's the best! Turn the wheel!!!!" I have absolutely no idea what that means. Perhaps it has to do with flipping the targets, but who knows... I love Leslie Jones' enthusiasm and think it's fun that NBC has been using her. But to use Leslie Jones yelling with enthusiasm and doing little bits, and not having Mary Carrillo do her tremendous pieces (and she's there in Pyeongchang) and only one piece by the great Jimmy Roberts is unacceptable. This below isn't from any of those people and isn't even about the current Olympics and isn't by NBC and is nothing more than an ad, but it's a terrific one from Ancestry.com and concerns the famous "Miracle on Ice" hockey team that beat Russia in 1980. Among that team's players who you hear in the ad are Dave Christian, team captain Mike Eruzione, John Harrington, Rob McClanahan and Buzz Schneider Imagine a presidency where any one of these things happened at some point during four years of an administration, yet they all occurred within the past week.
Staff Secretary Rob Porter and speechwriter David Sorensen both resigned from the Trump administration over allegations of spousal abuse. Chief of Staff John Kelly repeatedly lied and kept changing his stories about when he found out about the charges of Rob Porter's abuse, all the while asking other Trump staffers to support his lies to cover up why Porter was kept on staff, before Kelly was finally contradicted by the FBI. A report that 130 Trump staffers have been working in the White House without permanent security clearance, including some who have been handling the highest code-level national security documents. Trump's person lawyer admitted paying $130,000 in hush money to a porn actress. After a mass shooting where 17 schoolchildren and teachers were massacred in their high school, the Trump administration is blasted for his cold, empty response of "thoughts and prayers" and a photo op with first responders showing Trump with a smile and a big "thumbs up." And all of those may not have even been the worst story, for its long-term ramifications. (Certainly the school shooting was the most horrific and deeply impactful. That shows you how bad this other story is in its deep level of national importance.) Bringing us to the Special Counsel turning in 16 indictments and one guilty plea on Russian efforts to attack the United States with cyberwarfare. The thing is, what is so profoundly awful about this is not the meticulous details uncovered about the attack, nor that the nation's intelligence experts say that such operations are continuing and will be ratcheted up for the 2018 elections -- both of which are profoundly awful each on their own merits. No, what takes this to almost unimaginable levels of reprehensible is that Trump, the president of the United States, wasn't outraged by the charges by his own Justice Department that the country was attacked...and is still being attacked. He didn't say how he'd act to defend the country during this attack. He didn't immediately enable the sanctions against Russia which both houses of Congress passed almost unanimously. Instead, he blamed others for what he claims (wrongly, by the way, though that's no surprise) that they supposedly didn't. Never once addressing that, as president of the United States, having sworn an oath to "protect and defend" the country, and being presented with evidence that the nation is being attacked by Russia, he has failed to act and is unwilling to act. It's been a horrific week for Trump. But what sick for the country is that this is par for the course. And it seems reasonable to figure that such weeks will continue. And as dismal a week it was for Trump, it's worse for the country. But the one thing that must continue to be repeated is this -- that it is no longer about Trump, but about the elected officials of the Republican Party who continue to enable him. Well, the eponymous bobsledding had its day this morning. They ran the two-man event, and it was darn exciting. That's because the result was...a tie! The race came down to the Canadian team, trying to beat the first-place Germans sitting in Gold Medal position. And when the screen popped up with the difference at the end of their run, it was 0.00. The fun thing was seeing the Germans celebrate as much as the Canadians -- that's understandable, since a tie meant they got the Gold Medal, but what was unexpected was when they leaped over the barriers and raced to the Canadian team to offer their hugs. By the way, the last time the Canadians won the Gold Medal in the two-man bobsled was 20 years ago. It was a tie.
(This still isn't my favorite bobsled event. That's the four-man. That's the race which keeps my dream alive of being an Olympic athlete. More on that race when it hits the schedule.) Last night, I prepared my dinner to be timed for the middle of Olympic coverage. I could sit there at the table and enjoy a fine meal while reveling in the Olympics. The prep was finished, served, I sat down and..."And now we got to Gangneung Arena for the short program in Ice Dancing." Noooooooooo!!! Aghh. So much for a Meal Well Planned. Before I could ruin my appetite, I quickly switched the channel. All that was on was curling, but though I was nearing my fill of that, it was far preferable, especially when trying to eat. Yes, yes, I know -- "But Ice Dancing is So Pretty." And so is the ballet, but it's not an Olympic Sport. I leave the required rhumba to others. I was wary of watching today's "Olympic Ice," the hour-long segment of NBCsports that opens their 4 PM (Los Angeles time) broadcast and discusses All Things Skating when there's a competition on. And fulfilling my fears, they opened with ice dancing and spent 20 minutes on it. But then they moved on -- well, temporarily, shifting back to it later and there was an absolutely wonderful conversation with host Liam McHugh, Scott Hamilton and Brian Orser. Gold Medalist Hamilton and two-time Silver Medalist Orser of Canada were long-time competitors, but also clearly close friends of many decades, having performed together in ice shows for 17 years. And the friendship and rivalry came through joyfully. Mostly, they talked about Orser's move into coaching and his great success there, notably this year as coach of the Gold Medalist Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan AND the Silver Medalist, Javier Fernandez of Spain. He handles other skaters, as well, and talked about the challenge of dealing with different personalities and different cultures, saying the only way to make it work is focus on them for who they are, noting that Hanyu and Fernandez couldn't be more different. Hanyu, he said, is a little "spoiled," living at home, and having people doing things for him. Fernandez though lives on his own, makes his own meals and has his own social life -- and then Orser rolled his eyes and said, "Don't ask me about his social life." But it was the personal conversation between Hamilton and Orser that was so good, talking about being rivals, and some of that even still came through, especially on Orser's part (when talking about moves they did and gamesmanship, adding "You want to go now?"), though very warmly and good-naturedly. And then the show went back to ice dancing. Sigh. Speaking as we were just above about curling -- given how much NBC has been showing, most on CNBC to the extent that I think the first "C" now stands for curling, I'm really surprised that they don't regularly have a short video to show that explains the rules. Perhaps they have such a video, but if so they may have shown in once and that was it. Maybe their feeling is that anyone who watches curling already knows the rules. And the point. But if so, that's a deeply flawed theory, since the audience of curling aficionados must be very tiny by TV standards, I'm sure. By periodically explaining what in the world is actually going on and why on earth the players are doing this (other than to get the beer afterwards), they might actually draw more viewers. In comparison, when NBC broadcasts ski jumping -- a sport pretty easy to figure out: jump, see how far you go before you land -- they have a graphic that shows how high the hill is in relation to the Statue of Liberty, and I've seen that four times already. The women's hockey team -- another of my faves -- beat Finland handily, 5-0, last night and moved to the Gold Medal game which will be played on Wednesday. The game was close (2-0) in the second period, when the Americans blew it open when they had a two-person advantage due to penalties, and scored twice in about a 30-second span. They'd been doing badly this Olympics when having a penalty advantage, converting only 1 of 12. But having the two-person advantage was what they needed to break the ice. No pun intended. (For those who don't follow hockey, the team didn't have a two-person advantage for the full two minutes -- when the first goal was scored, Finland could bring one play back from the penalty box.) Finally! John Oliver has returned to HBO with new episodes of Last Week Tonight, after much too much time off on hiatus. At last. Tonight, on the show's return, they take a 19-minute look at Donald Trump in relation to the rest of the world, from an international perspective. And no, it isn't pretty. But you know that.
We watch the Olympics all day so that you don't have to.
There was an amazing finish to the Men's Biathlon, one of those odd sports that I happen to love. It's a grueling competition, coming rifle shooting and a 15,000 meter cross-country "Mass Start" race, about 10 miles. And it came down to a photo finish! That's how close it was in the race for the Gold Medal between Martin Fourcade of France and Simon Schempp of Germany. But even more than that, the winner, Fourcade, had lost in a photo finish by 3 centimeters in the same race at the last Olympics! In fact, he thought he had lost this year, as well, and slammed his ski poles, but then moments later found out he had one. "Four years ago in Sochi I lost by only three centimeters, so I thought the story was repeating again," he said later. "Tonight it’s incredible." But the race is even better than that -- because only 11 seconds later, two competitors came in neck-and-neck battling for the Bronze Medal. The Norwegian won by just .4 of a second, and it would have been even closer if his opponent hadn't pulled up when it was clear he'd lost.
I like short-track skating. It's been a great addition to the Winter Games, and is great fun for its off-beat wild excitement of the races. That said, while I know that the potential for crashes is one of the things that keeps you on edge, I find it problematic when you have an event like last night's finals where three out of five competitors could go out in one spill, leaving only two skaters to continue around the track. This is the Olympics, after all, not Demolition Derby. At least in the early rounds if there's a crash, those who were unfairly knocked out can be reinstated to the next round by the judges. But in the finals, there's no such recourse. I know that being crashed into is a risk in any group race -- though it doesn't happen often, and usually only affects one or two participants and not nearly the entire field. I don't know what the answer is, or if there should be an answer. I'm just saying that the reality of it detracts from the Medal Race. There's an odd conflict between similar races in several sports, the kind where only one person races and the athletes compete against time, usually Alpine skiing and the sliding sports. It's that in some of these events, it's the best time of any individual run during the various rounds which is declared the winner -- while in other sports they combine the total time of all yours runs. Honestly, I don't know which is best. I'm inclined to prefer the latter, but I can easily defend The Best Single Time being the best way to go. What I don't quite understand, though, is how a sport determines which to use. Saturday night should be one of those great Olympic nights when you can hunker down and revel in the the coverage for the full evening. Unfortunately, it was filled with "Slopestyle skiing." One of those ersatz "freestyle" sports that requires great skill and numbs my mind. When the description of an event includes the phrase, "Man was not made to...", then you know you're dealing with something that might be great fun to watch from afar, but has no business being an Olympic Sport. And doing somersaults and double-twists on skis is one of those. 'Tis not for me. I can watch for a few minutes, but that's my limit. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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