The Games have always brought people together in peace to respect universal moral principles. ~ Website of the International Olympic Committee
“I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mother and father.” ~ Paul Hamm, Gymnast
Who won this year’s Beijing Olympics? Of course, the United States did, right? And, if you were to judge this by looking at the American new media, you’d be right. But, alas, as the American Mainstream News Media is wont to do, they don’t report the facts. From mushrooms clouds created by bombs dropped by Saddam Hussein over American cities; to hidden caches of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq; to even repeating such brash hypocritical nonsense as Condi Rice’s quote about military power: That it is "not the way to deal in the 21st century," the American media have it, most unfortunately, wrong once again. America did not win this year’s Olympic games. The fact of the matter is that, China did. China gets the gold; America gets the silver; Russia gets the Bronze.
I must admit that I had to look up who had won the silver and bronze as I, like any other person, don’t really care about who comes in second or third. Like most people, I only care about who wins. This is Olympic Gold we’re talking about here, right?
I guess I am of the ilk of guys like Al Davis, owner of the Oakland Raiders who says stuff like, "Just win, baby." I think 99% of all Americans are this way, or they used to be, up until this year’s Olympics. Now it looks like America accepts, "Also Ran."
The Chinese won this year’s Olympics hand’s down. Good for them. They deserve it, too. They had the better team.
America? We stumbled in with the Silver. We’re number two, but we try harder… No, that’s not really true. I’d love to say that we try harder, but we don’t. In fact, we hardly make any effort at all. It’s amazing that with the lack of effort and education that the average America puts in everyday that we, as a nation, are still afloat at all. We don’t try harder, we just try to bend the facts to fit our state of denial.
America is not number one in anything at all anymore… Excepting for the numbers of people we put in prison, the national debt, personal debt, how many people we’ve killed in the last few years. Also, we are number one in an area that most Americans would like to ignore; we’re number one when it comes to invading, bombing, occupying, and interfering in the internal affairs of other countries far more than any other nation on the planet. America can boast that it has sixty-three years of this kind of crime against humanity and is still going strong!
Things are bad and they are getting worse, but you already knew that… unless, of course, you are one of the very many Americans in serious denial.
I chuckle whenever I see the 2008 Beijing Olympics Medal Counts on a site geared for American consumption. There’s the Good Old U.S. of A. in her God given place at Number One in medals. Go USA. Surely we are the best. We are the chosen people. We beat everybody every time. We are number one…well, or maybe we’re not. At this year’s Olympics, for the rest of the entire world, America was second best. And Joe-Public American seems happy about it?
Whatever happened to going for the Gold? I remember a time, actually exactly four years ago, when American’s didn’t care about the Silver or Bronze, but only cared about the Gold. It was back in those days when America hauled in the most Gold medals of any country and Gold medals were all that mattered. No one cared about Silver or Bronze. But now that the USA got it’s rear-end handed to it on a platter by Chinese athletes, the US mass media has to kowtow to machismo psychosis in a public with serious confidence problems by making it look like the USA won the Olympics.
I’ve got news for you. America did not win the Beijing Olympics. It’s over. We lost.
Click on and look at these charts. The first one is made for American consumption. It, to be kind, bends the truth. It shows the USA at number one with a total of 110 medals. China is second.
But, alas, the truth hurts. The second chart is the official Overall Medal Standings as stated by the IOC. It is in the customary form with Gold medals being the basis for standings. China wins the Gold medal rush handily by beating the USA 51—36. If that were a football game score, it would have been a rout.
The first chart, by MSN, has been altered by some editor to make it look more palatable for an American audience; the more you look at it, the more you can find fault with the logic; it is inconsistent. Some examples of this inconsistency is, for example; France has a mere 7 Gold medals, while South Korea has 13, yet France is listed above South Korea?
The logic in this unimportant miniscule piece of nonsense used to placate the American public is completely incorrect. Think about this, using the logic of the MSN chart, then if Togo, for example, had no Gold, no Silver, but 111 Bronze medals, they would be number one? No one would think so, and neither would you, unless you are in denial.
The Official Overall Standings are worldwide internationally accepted results of this year’s Beijing Olympics the world over… These are the official results; regardless of how much some editor in Boise would like it to be different. It is not.
Who cares about sports to cheat to make it look like you’ve won when you didn’t? Immature people with nothing more important in their lives to do, I suppose. Since America is never short on the immature machismo front, heck, if we can’t win, we’ll cheat to make it look like we won.
Why is this sort of thing important to people? So important that they must cheat? Maybe it’s blowback from having things go to hell in a hand-basket in such a short length of time; Maybe it’s a symptom of a people who know that their time has come and passed; Maybe it’s a sign that points to American awareness that the economy is near-death. Whatever the reasons are, America is not number one anymore. China is number one. America, get used to it.
But maybe I’m being too hard on America by saying that the USA team didn’t win and that it was an "Also Ran"…. Maybe you’re right. "Also Ran" is too brutal… would "Bridesmaid" make it sound any better?
