It's been really hard not to notice that suddenly certain events aren't being shown dur8ng the primitive block anymore and then you look them up and it's all the events Chinese people won.
It really is a microcosm of American propoganda. There's thousands of hours of almost any event you can think of happening but NBC paid millions of dollars so that every night we can have an hour of interviews, an hour of commercials, an hour of "inspiring backstories" and 15 minutes of watching the 6 swimming races and gymnastic disciplines America was competitive in that day.
When I was a kid my dad used to show me the difference between the Canadian feed and the American feed for the Olympics and even decades ago the American channels would basically only focus on American athletes, you'd hardly know there was anyone else competing if it wasn't for the overlay and scores.
This is one of the reasons I came to dislike following the Olympics: what should be an event to celebrate human achievement in sports becomes grounds for nationalism and chauvinism to fester. I always thought it was nice when anyone would break a world record and be amazed at their achievements, but it's really jarring to see even people next to me cheering for my country. Idk, just a rant
I honestly think it would be so cool if instead of having national teams, athletes could just choose to associate to international clubs. I don't know enough about sports or the Olympics to think of how it could be done in a way that makes sense, but it feels really weird that all sporting currently is all about what country is better than others.
There's literally an option to participate under an international banner, a bunchnof russians did it last time around in the wi ter olympics when they weren't allowed to represent Russia because of war crimes (weirdly this was the only country that standard has been applied to in the last couple olympics)
Yeah the meltdowns are hilarious. Weaponizing sports for imperial purposes tho is just tedious. Id ask what's wrong with these people but they're pro genocide so it doesn't even register on the larger scheme of things.
I read someone say the pool they're using isn't as deep as previously and there's more turbulence or something as a result and it makes it harder to swim
What sucks is that this bullshit makes me cynical and tired when relatively normal Americans do cool things to. Sorry Simon Biles, your comment about sportsmanship being important falls flat as hell when the only thing that matters and is shown is when Americans do well, not to mention when your Olympic peers repeatedly demonstrate their inability to compete. I don't know her politics, beliefs or whatever but it's so frustrating when athletes get who may or may not understand their cynical deployment as propaganda get coopted into "America number one" bullshit.
yesterday i wtched a little in german TV and ther was a 3000 m Woman run with a big Jumpy thing , and they keept showing the German Runner "Mayer" that was fighting for place 14 somewhere over there ... nearly the hole duration of the Run while giving the lead way less airtime.. its not double standart , taht pure Racism i think..
what i like about olympics is that every time there's something even slightly controversial people have to mention Michael Phelps. let the dude be the goat of swimming in peace.
I don't think this is necessarily antagonistic to Phelps but more exactly literally what they wrote, the western double standard which is realy just good old racism. Asians are only meant to win at badminton or table tennis or some other stereotype shit.