For the past few weeks I have been watching the Olympic games on television. I am a hardcore Olympic fan and love watching them every couple of years, but I am personally a huge fan of the winter Olympics.
As the Olympics this year have played out I have become aware of the lack of attentionpaid to the games by popular American society. There also seems to be a general missunderstanding by many American athletes as to the pupose of the Olympic games. While other countries regard their Olympic athletes as hero's, the American athletes are largely forgotten after the games have ended. Their short lived fame is punctuated by an effort to garner as much endorsement cash as they can before their light burns out.
While the oylmpic coverage presents us with detailed stories chronicling the lives of many of these atheletes and their struggle just to be in the games, I see the TV ratings demonstrating that the American public is much more interested in the pre-packaged reality TV of American Idol or Survivor instead real life stories of people overcoming obstacles.
To make matters worse we have athletes in our ranks that have an attitude like Shani Davis who have seem to missed the entire point of the Olympics. The Olympics were envisioned as a competition where athletes come to represent their country and compete on behalf of their country. The purpose was to have competition instead of war between states and countries. Instead we have pure self indulgence. The honor of the American athletes should be that they brought a medal, back to America not to their own homes.
Thank goodness at least some American respect and dignity is saved by some truly sincere American atheletes like Apolo Anton Ohno. I am sure there are many more in those ranks, but unfortunatly due to NBC's decision to cover only about four events each night during prime-time I was unable to see them.
