Posted on 07/14/2024 4:54:42 AM PDT by MtnClimber
A country divided against itself is a country comfortable with defeat.
The Olympic Games return to Paris after a century’s absence, yet there is little excitement in the air. In Middle America, I really don’t hear anybody talking about them. Occasionally, some sports commercial reminds viewers about athletes whose names have largely been forgotten since their last appearance on the world stage. A few Big Box stores are selling Olympic-themed t-shirts, toys, dog leashes, drink mugs, and other sundries. Now and then, someone remarks that this would be a terrible time to visit the City of Light. Besides the knickknacks and small talk, though, few seem to care.
The television ratings over the last several Olympics bear out this general apathy. The well-produced spectacle has been steadily losing eyeballs during the first quarter of the present century, and there is no sign that the trend will reverse. I have seen many writers chalk this up to the growing number of streaming options peeling erstwhile viewers away. There is certainly truth in the observation that any program will receive more attention when people have fewer entertainment alternatives.
However, something else has changed. Passion for the Olympics is not what it once was. Water-cooler conversation about which American heroes will win gold medals and which foreign athletes pose the greatest challenge has all but disappeared. Americans still tune in for the Super Bowl with gusto. They still love baseball and basketball, and they’ve grown to embrace NASCAR, hockey, and soccer, too. If you walk into a sports bar, you can find people enthusiastically watching darts, bowling, boxing, volleyball, sport fishing and just about any other kind of contest or game. Yet here we approach one of the toughest athletic competitions in the world, and in my neck of the woods....
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
I think people are tired of leftist athletes that hate their own country.
who has cared for the Olympics for the past 30 years or so.
last thing I heard from the Olympics was something about a bombing in Atlanta.
1972- Munich, Germany
Then the sports-ball people took over, and professionals were allowed to compete. (Sounds like trannies swimming against girls, doesn't it?)
And the professional sports-ball rap culture vultures started talking and who wants to hear more of that?
If the Olympics want to be more relevant, they need to attract more betting. And maybe have a playoff season that stretches longer than the regular season. At least the WNBA has something it can compete against for ratings.
We are RVing through eastern Canada as I write this. I am pleasantly surprised by the number of Canadian flags out there on homes and campsites. I figured they would have been cowed into being ashamed of them. Apparently not.
In the evenings we have been watching “Anne of Green Gables”. They have a lot to be proud of. Nothing wrong with a little nationalism.
(FYI I am an American)
The title question is a good one. I stopped caring a long time ago. American athletes protesting America is not acceptable to me.
I lived in Huntsville Alabama during one of the Olympics. The network (ABC, or NBC, or CBS) commentator went on and on about a Canadian woman swimmer. An American swimmer, from Huntsville, came in second beating out the Canadian. The announcer said, more than once, that the American had robbed the Canadian of second place. There was no contact or any impropriety and none was alleged. She just swam faster.
The American girl was the granddaughter of one of the German scientists who came with Werhner von Braun. Talk about holding a grudge. There were no positive words for the American who won silver in that event. F the networks.
Yeah, Olympics went corporate and lost most of the meaning. Money destroys lots of things.
“””””We are RVing through eastern Canada as I write this. I am pleasantly surprised by the number of Canadian flags out there on homes and campsites.”””””
Texas does that, drive through the hill country and you see lots and lots of Texas flags and symbols on peoples property and on their gates and fences.
“Who Cares About the Olympics in a World without Patriotism?”
The Mercantile industry definately does. It has ruined most holidays with that cheapshit bling and nonsensical faux traditions.
Other than that... good point. With cable/streaming subscriptions etc.. hardly anybody gets to see the damn thing anyway.
Not sure what year but I stopped watching when the “Dream Team” members threw a hissy about sneakers.
It was apparent they had more loyalty to their shoe company than their country.
And along came LeBron.
The illiterate uneducated idiot gave Houston GM Darrell Morey a lecture and told him to get informed when Morey made a statement backing a freedom movement in Hong Kong which angered the Red Chinese and threatened the Chinese box office of some stupid remake of a movie that LeBron starred in and invested in.
Morey graduated from MIT.
Anything that garners more than a modicum of attention is going to be spammed with Leftist politics. Parades, TV shows, movies, sports, even churches. I don’t want to see any of it as it turns my stomach. Now I read because the moment I get to, “his husband” or “global warming” or anything about alphabet people and their pronouns, it’s on to the next article or book.
Yes, it’s this crap and the melodramatic personal stories about athletes that made me quit watching. I was done when an American woman won gold in shooting and we got one sentence about it and a 20 minute hardship story about about some Eastern European gymnast or weightlifter.
I want to see the competitions where the Americans win or do well, no matter the sport. I want to see every medal ceremony where our flag was raised without commentary and hear from that athlete without the interviewer being so awful the athlete has nothing to say.
The parade of nations used to be fun until the verbal diarrhea of the commentators got in the way.
A lot of money to be made, in particular in public corruption surrounding hosting the games. Also gambling (for certain events).
Ungrateful angry activist athletes, professionals allowed to compete, not to mention the *insufferable* sad sack stories of the life stories of the athletes with maudlin music. I for one can’t watch women’s gymnastics anymore knowing that Larry Nasser’s molestation was known and those looking to profit off the girls pretended it wasn’t happening.
Here’s all I know about the run up to the Olympics.
The swim qualifications were done in an NFL stadium and the setup of a portable above ground Olympic sized swimming pool was a really damn cool thing to learn about.
A black woman running track cried about her breaking barriers by being a black woman running track…. No didn’t make that one up.
After that I promptly decided I can continue not watching track.
“...something else has changed. Passion for the Olympics is not what it once was.”
In 1924 William Randolph Hearst paid good money to receive Olympic results from Paris. In California the people waited with anticipation to see what would happen to Duke Kuhanamoku in swimming and water polo. And San Francisco Bay Area went on a tear after Helen Wills Moody won tennis golds. They were exciting times.
It's all about the money. For quite some time now, as Jerry Seinfeld says, "you're rooting for the uniforms". I'd add that you're cheering for products being endorsed.
"Go cereal!"
"Go athletic footwear!"
"Go lip balm!"
"Go sugared drink!"
"Go television network!"
"Go wireless carrier!"
"Go automobile!"
A great example is Chloe Kim, a United States citizen born to Korean-American parents, who represented the United States in international competition until it came to the Olympics where she competed for China because she'd make more money from endorsements.
Her handlers now try to gloss over that fact and her Wikipedia page doesn't identify it at all.
The last time I cared about the Olympics was the 1976 American boxing team.
The Olympics have become completely unwatchable without a DVR. Too many commercials, too many human non-interest stories, too much posing and too much commentary. Fast forward past all that garbage and you can get to the sports buried underneath it.
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