We watch the Olympics throughout most of the day, so that you don’t have to. On Friday, they had to cancel the Team Alpine skiing event because of high winds, which was to be Mikaela Shiffrin’s last chance for a medal, in remarkably her sixth event. The question was if it could be rescheduled – and it was. The event is dominated by Europeans, but the U.S. came down to a tie-breaker and finished fourth, out of the medals by a few tenths of a second. She skated every race cleanly and well, though most of the time had to ski on the “red” course, which was so much a slower course than the “blue” that no skier of any country was able to win their two-person race there. Still, her being on the course at all forced their opponents to use their better skier to race against her, in essence “wasting” a blue course race. Afterwards, all the members of the U.S. team made gracious comments, but it’s not surprising that hers were the most gracious of them all, praising her teammates so movingly for their support, and saying they were her best memories of the Olympics. I’m very happy to write that, once again, the wonderful Jessie Diggins won yet another medal in cross-country skiing. The race was the 30k freestyle, which is almost 19 miles in the bitter, 19-degree cold and swirling wind. She got the Silver Medal, far behind the leader Therese Johaug of Norway who swamped the field, winning by 1-minute 43-seconds… but Diggins herself was far ahead of third place by 50 seconds. And when she crossed the finish line, she threw her arms up in exultation – and then collapsed to the ground, totally wiped out, even staying there for several minutes, finally having to be almost carried off by team officials. I guess that skiing for 19 miles in the bitter cold and wind will do that to you. Especially if you had food poisoning the day before! This is Diggins’ second medal of the Games, and her third career medal – which now gives the U.S. ski program in its history (men and women combined) a total of…three medals. Yes, all Jessie Diggins. And it’s worth noting that the two races she won medals in this year – one was the “sprint” and the other 19 miles. That’s versatility. This is 2-minutes and 30 seconds of sheer exhaustion (stick with it...), followed by an interview – with, of course, her glitter. It's recorded off the TV with my phone, so the audio isn't high quality, but it's fine. It’s pretty hard to find anything exciting in curling, but the other day, U.S. men’s team made a shot that was otherworldly. It stunned even the announcers. And though a lot of it was totally lucky, the end result was still amazing. It’s hard to describe it, but I’ll try. In the second to last round, with the U.S. up by, I think, two points, their opponents had a stone in the center, pretty well guarded by another stone, so they were almost guaranteed a point because the U.S. only had one play left. The U.S. player skid the stone down the ice, and when reaching the “bullseye” home area, it knocked a Chinese stone out of the way…then ricocheted off, slid down where it hit a U.S. stone – and then bounced back up…to hit that their opponent’s stone in the center and not only knock it out of the way – but wound up in the center itself, where it stopped! So, the Americans ended up winning the round. The announcers were laughing that he should do that more often, and even the U.S. player struggled to contain himself from laughing.
And no, nothing changed. As much as I normally love doing so, I still won’t be watching the Closing Ceremony. A great deal was wondering in the Games. Too much wasn’t.
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Okay, so it's a long one -- and clearly a Facebook posting, not officially a Tweet. But still, you get the point...
We have a new one this week. The contestant is Colleen Stadnick from Katy, Texas. I didn’t have a clue. Not of the hidden song or composer style. Both are very well-known. And even on hearing it a second time and knowing the answer, I had a hard time hearing it. I could hear a slight touch of the hidden song, but (for me) that’s it. However, the contestant got both, and said she got the hidden song right away, so you might do a whole lot better than me. You couldn’t do worse.
We watch the Olympics throughout most of the day, so that you don’t have to.
And today, we also bring you a news story related to the Games which, though reported by the NY Times, hasn't gotten a great amount of coverage elsewhere. That's at the end, but first on to the events themselves -- I was underwhelmed by the short program for pairs figure skating, but I thought the free skate was pretty good. It doesn’t air on primetime until tonight (when they’ll likely have the top pairs), but the full event was on during the night, and I recorded it, and then watched during the morning. There was a very nice moment when the team for Israel skated to “The Impossible Dream,” which ends on the line, “To reach the unreachable star” – at which point the man lifted his partner above his head, which she held in a difficult, twisted position. “Oh, that’s perfect,” analysist Johnny Weir said – but not for how well it was done (though it was), but rather, as he explained, “That move they just did is called a ‘star.’” Conversely, when the German pairs skated, they did very well…except on their two attempted lift, they weren’t able to get the woman raised either time. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that happen before. Their scores plummeted. Though one of the U.S. teams with Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier finished just out of the top five, they had a wonderful skate, and still ended up high, in sixth place. And I was very happy that the early perception I wrote about after watching the U.S. figure skating championships and European championships, the NBC analyst team of Terry Gannon and skaters Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir were superb, back at the level when I first saw them before becoming the network’s main team, when they were the “B team” sort of auditioning on a less-watched NBCsports channel. Over the last few years, after being promoted, their success got a bit out of control, to the point of Lipinski and Weir acting like “we’re the show.” But this year, they’ve been back to insightful and objective commentary, analyzing during a skate (which I love), being quietly funny and still outlandish in the moment, not overall. And as always, they work wonderfully with anchor Terry Gannon, which is excellent in what can be a thankless job. Happily, they’ve finally been having a lot more of bobsledding, which is one of my faves. And nice to see pilot Elena Meyers Taylor get the Bronze Medal, the fifth Olympic medal of her career, the most-ever by a U.S. bobsledder. I’ve also adjusted one of the reasons for loving bobsledding, which in the past has focused on the four-man event. That’s because, as I’ve written, it allows me to keep my dream alive of making the Olympic team. I wouldn’t be any good, and we’d lose, but in the four-man event there are two team members whose only job is to help the other two teammates push a sled 15 feet and then pull themselves into the sled and sit for the rest of the race. And I can do that. But what I realized is that I could also be a brakeman, which means I could compete in the two-person event (which only has the pilot of brakeman) if they needed me and called at the last minute. I’ve always ignored that race, since the brakeman is someone who has to be big, very strong and fast, pushing the sled before stepping into the opening at the back and sitting the rest of the result. But I realized that if it’s just a case of needing a brakeman to compete, then simply stepping into the opening at the back is even easier than pulling yourself over the side! And again, sure, we’d be bad and lose. But the point is, I could do it!! Finally, there was a news story in the NY Times (which you can read here) – that I saw discussed elsewhere – about China propaganda during the Olympics. Apparently, the Chinse have created fake accounts, bots and influencers on social media to try to combat the critical news stories during the Olympics about the country, notably their human rights violations. The sub-headline reads, “The country’s propagandists have used a variety of tools online to promote a vision of the Games that is free of rancor or controversy.” Among the more aggressive of the efforts has been a Twitter account called Spicy Panda, which has been posting cartoons and videos against stories that pointed out problems. One cartoon sent by the Spicy Panda account accused the U.S. of using “its deceiving propaganda weapon to stain the Olympics.” The article notes that by using these various tools -- “China has been able to selectively edit how the events have appeared, even outside the country, promoting everything that bolsters the official, feel-good story about the Winter Olympics and trying to smother whatever doesn’t.” So, what we get from all these efforts are a “Potemkin village” of stories from China that don’t actually exist in the real world. Instead, the article explains, the world public is told that “At Beijing 2022, the hills are snowy, not brown as usual this time of year. A Uyghur skier is the symbol of national unity, the tennis player Peng Shuai [who disappeared for months after saying a Chinese official sexually abused her] just a curious spectator. Athletes and foreign journalists praise the polite volunteers and marvel at the high-speed trains and the robots that boil dumplings and mix drinks.” Just one more reason, I suspect, even without knowing this, why TV viewers – myself included – have had an uncomfortable sensibility while watching the Games, as enjoyable as many aspects of them are. And another reason why, like with the Opening Ceremonies, I won’t be watching the Closing Ceremonies…which otherwise I always like to do. More to come… The article notes that linguistic "Machine learning revealed that J.K. Rowling, the creator of Harry Potter, had written the 2013 mystery “Cuckoo’s Calling” under another pen name. The F.B.I. used a form of stylometry to show that Ted Kaczynski was the Unabomber. In recent years, such techniques have helped detectives in the United States and Britain solve murder cases involving a forged suicide note and faked text messages."
You can read the full, fascinating article here. (Completely tangential side note: Though I haven't read any of the Harry Potter books, I have read all four of Rowling's 'Cameron Strike' mystery novels that began with Cuckoo's Calling, and they've been excellent. A little weak on the convoluted resolutions, but other than that, they're terrific. Very well-done British TV movies have been made of them all. They occasionally show up on premium cable, but I also think they've available on Hulu.)
On this week’s Al Franken podcast, his guest is former gun executive Ryan Busse – who Al says was “Once an NRA hero, now gives us the dirt.” He’s the author of Gunfight, a book about how the NRA turned from teaching gun safety into a pernicious threat to public safety and democracy.
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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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