OLYMPIC GRIPES

I don't hate the Olympics, but I hate the bullshit that surrounds and envelops the Olympics like pink hats around Jacoby Ellsbury. And I do hate China, with a passion. And I hate the IOC (International Olympic Committee).

2012 will see no more baseball at the Olympic games. Why not? I don't really know. Baseball isn't just played in the US. It's played in the entire Western Hemisphere, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Australia, and Europe. Seeing the Cuban national team is a treat every 4 years because the talent is near Major League levels. But it won't be an Olympic sport in 2012, and neither will softball.

Yet these are Olympic sports:

Race walking.



Only Europeans could come up with this. It's a race on foot, but you can't run. If you run, you're disqualified. It looks pretty hard, but it looks pretty retarded.

Ping pong.



It's not table tennis, it's fucking ping pong! They actually have DOUBLES ping pong in the Olympics! Is gold that worthless that it's given out every 4 years to 2 Asian dudes who are sick at ping pong?

And if ping pong is an Olympic sport why not...?



Or this...



Or bowling, or mini-golf, or pool, or darts, or Beirut, or flip cup, or speed reading, or seeing who can go the longest without sleeping, or Edward 40 hands, or running backwards, or staring contests???

And can ESPN, NBC, and everyone else in the universe all give Michael Phelps some rest and get off his junk? Yes, he's a phenomenal athlete and deserves all the medals, endorsements, praise, and groupies he'll get.



But this whole debating bullshit is melting my brain. "Is he the best Olympian ever?" How the fuck could anybody know that?!? It's hard enough to compare athletes from different eras in the same sport, but when you start comparing him to Jim Thorpe (decathlon/pentathlon/long jump/high jump), and Jesse Owens (sprinter/long jump); you're wasting your time. Can't we just sit back and enjoy the events without having to wonder if he's the best, 2nd best, or 3rd best ever?

And China can go straight to hell. So can the IOC. The big argument for China getting the 2008 games was "if Nazi Germany got them in 1936, why not China?" But Nazi Germany used the games as propaganda. It was a chance for Hitler to impress his country (and the world) on the biggest possible stage. So why are we allowing China to do the same thing?

The glamour and scale of the Opening Ceremony was eerily similar to the grandiose spectacles the Nazis used in their rallies, and the Soviets used in their big May-Day parades.



The fuckos who think the Olympics are some sort of peace-creating lovefest piss me off most of all. The Olympics have nothing to do with peace, and just a little bit to do with sports. They're an opportunity for governments to aggrandize themselves, to make themsevles seem amazingly powerful in the eyes of their own people. They're a monstrous platform for enormous multinational corporations to sell their products. McDonalds, Visa, Coca-Cola and 9 other companies paid $866 million just to be able to put the Olympic logo on their products and put up signs at Olympic facilities.

The Olympics aren't a peaceful time outside the host city, and even inside it. Just ask the people right now in Georgia, or the 1972 Israeli Olympic team, or the 2 people who died in Atlanta in '96. And they don't spread peace or goodwill, either. In 1968, Mexico City hosted the games, but their dictatorial government massacred hundreds of protesters that same year. And I don't need to tell you what Germany did post-1936, when Berlin was the host city.

The Olympics are sports, and some of them are fun to watch. I prefer the Winter Olympics, with the best hockey competition in the world. And I have a sick curling fetish. But most of it is bullshit. Michael Phelps is not the greatest athlete of all time. China is not a good country. McDonalds has nothing to do with athleticism.

-The Commodore