I am not exactly sure why you have to be 16 to compete in women's gymnastics, but as long as it is a rule, do you really want us to believe some of the Chinese girls are 16? I don't think they are, hell, I don't think they are even human. The gold medalist in the middle is some kind of 14 year old love child of a Star wars creature. What kind of freak show are they running over there? Obviously, they know how to put on a show, the Opening Ceremonies were the absolute best. But when you look at the picture above, it is painfully obvious they are leading in human cloning as well. I just don't know what two organisms you would have to split off to produce the Chinese gymnastic team (harsh I know). Pictured to the left is gold medalist Nastia Liukin, the Russian native born American all around champion. I guess as an American I should be proud, but I can't stand that cold, bony bitch. But then again I am bitter, I have drawn my wagons around two runners-up this year, first it was Hillary, who lost by a hair. And now, it is Shawn Johnson, pictured below.
Now, there is an American champion. Iowa corn fed, she is 57 inches of charisma, and 95 pounds of smile. Losing the gold multiple times despite owning the sport for the past two years, when interviewed, she was nothing but classy. Praised the winners and showed pride in the silver medals she unfortunately won (despite a scoring system so incredibly stupid, and an organized effort to reward style points for dance, and limit the scoring on power and tumbling tricks, which hurt Johnson tremendously). I don't want to say the scoring was incredibly biased towards the host country, but in totalling out the scores this year, the judges actually used abacuses. But, Shawn? She continued to smile, she kept her head up and she finally persevered, definitely All American traits to be sure. For me, this is the true winner of the Olympic games, an athelete who exemplified the true spirit of the Olympics. Despite adversity, no one greeted and congratulated her fellow competitors more, or more genuinely than her. No wonder when Wheaties decided on their Olympics box super star, they called on Shawn Johnson.
I am not exactly sure why you have to be 16 to compete in women's gymnastics, but as long as it is a rule, do you really want us to believe some of the Chinese girls are 16? I don't think they are, hell, I don't think they are even human. The gold medalist in the middle is some kind of 14 year old love child of a Star wars creature. What kind of freak show are they running over there? Obviously, they know how to put on a show, the Opening Ceremonies were the absolute best. But when you look at the picture above, it is painfully obvious they are leading in human cloning as well. I just don't know what two organisms you would have to split off to produce the Chinese gymnastic team (harsh I know). Pictured to the left is gold medalist Nastia Liukin, the Russian native born American all around champion. I guess as an American I should be proud, but I can't stand that cold, bony bitch. But then again I am bitter, I have drawn my wagons around two runners-up this year, first it was Hillary, who lost by a hair. And now, it is Shawn Johnson, pictured below.
Now, there is an American champion. Iowa corn fed, she is 57 inches of charisma, and 95 pounds of smile. Losing the gold multiple times despite owning the sport for the past two years, when interviewed, she was nothing but classy. Praised the winners and showed pride in the silver medals she unfortunately won (despite a scoring system so incredibly stupid, and an organized effort to reward style points for dance, and limit the scoring on power and tumbling tricks, which hurt Johnson tremendously). I don't want to say the scoring was incredibly biased towards the host country, but in totalling out the scores this year, the judges actually used abacuses. But, Shawn? She continued to smile, she kept her head up and she finally persevered, definitely All American traits to be sure. For me, this is the true winner of the Olympic games, an athelete who exemplified the true spirit of the Olympics. Despite adversity, no one greeted and congratulated her fellow competitors more, or more genuinely than her. No wonder when Wheaties decided on their Olympics box super star, they called on Shawn Johnson.
8 comments:
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If the IOC isn't as anti-American - multi-cultural - politically correct as I think, the Chinese will be stripped of their golds:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/gymnastics/underaged-gold-winner-claims-grow/2008/08/21/1219262374664.html
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I agree with you about Shawn Johnson's impressive sportsmanship. It's people like her that make the games almost tolerable. Here's my tirade about the Olympics: I admire the quality of the athletics, but I cringe every time I hear the thing about "the world coming together in peaceful competition." I know that nationalism is normal, but if we really wanted to come together in peaceful competition, we'd have Olympic teams made up of athletes from multiple countries. The blue team, the yellow team, the green team, whatever, and you'd win medals for your team, not your country. I know this is a crazy idea and would certainly be an organizational nightmare, but at least the modern Olympics would finally be what they purport to be. Until then, we should just call them what they are - thinly disguised war.
Plus, it seems to me that there are certain events (not all, of course, but some) that don't have to be divided up by gender. The marathon, for instance - why is there a separate one for men and a separate one for women? In the Boston and New York City marathons, doesn't everybody run together and there's a male winner and a female winner? In the Olympics, if I'm not mistaken, the equestrian events are the only ones in which men and women compete together. Why not others? (I've always asked the same question about the idiot Academy Awards - they don't give awards for best editing by a man and best editing by a woman, so why are there separate awards for best actor and best actress?)
Yeah, I know I'm insane, but it's the 21st century - I thought we were supposed to be thinking outside the box a little.
Oh, and one more thing: Why has it taken the Olympics for people to start noticing China? Okay, their government leaves a bit to be desired, but these people invented practically everything. They were printing books centuries before Gutenberg, for heaven's sake. It doesn't take Olympic medals to prove that China is a force to be reckoned with.
Thanks for the comments, Jennifer. I understand (sort of) your issues with the Olympics. They are, and always have been incredibly nationalistic. And that is OK, that's what spurs on the interest, although even I tire of the notion that they are somehow competing "for their country".
There have been times when atheletes were competing against each other at the same time their countries were at war with each other, not to mention the contests during the cold war. Despite the unrest in the world, the atheletes do actually come together. Whether they truly associate and mingle amongst each other is undoubtedly a rarity, but it could happen. Trouble is, the venues are often spread out so far apart that they cannot really associate with a wide range of atheletes. But I have read some Olympian blogs saying how they loved seeing the American basketball team, and the like, so it can happen.
What I have always liked about the Olympics is there was a time when the atheletes were not comprised of professionals, like in recent times. There is something wrong with Kobe and the boys beating up on the basketball team from Australia for instance. Not a contest. Now days it is common knowledge that countries reward their gold medals winners with large sums of cash. There was a purity to the games, whether true or not (and some teams were always paid all year long to represent their countires, like the Russian basketball team, for example).
The beauty of the Beijing Olympics is that China actually opened themselves up to the world, for the first time ever in such a public forum. They showed some pride as well, and architecturally they scored a knockout. Very impressive.
I think the three main reasons I am addicted to the Olympics are, they only happen every four years, they last for two weeks and they allow me to witness sports I would not otherwise have any contact (or interest in) at all. I have seen handball, badmitten, fencing (which could be unisex for sure), ping pong (table tennis), synchronized swimming (for about ten minutes, what a freak show that is), and diving, which I kind of wish I could see more of.
But what I like best is that it takes me back to my childhood; from harmless escapeism / fantasies, to hero worshipping my favorites, up to and including joining the rest of the males in the world and losing their minds over the latest "it" girl, who seems to be Shawn Johnson this Olympics. Harmless fantasy I used to say.
But, in checking out the comments on her blog (I do my research after all), this poor innocent girl from Iowa has received hundreds of thousands of hits on her blog and hundreds of comments, many of which scare me, and certainly should scare her family. There are truly some sick people out there, and in this Youtube world, even I can google her schools location, the location of her gym (including a google earth picture), and an alarming amount of personal information about this little girl. Plus her image is plastered all over everywhere now, and she is the media darling.
I do wonder if her reward for ten years of hard work won't be unwanted attention from everyone around her (from now on she lives under a microscope)and a certain amount of danger from the 1% of sickos out there? We do seem to chew them up and spit them out, and many of them come out pretty screwed up in the process. How would you go from all of this attention to being a normal Iowan high school student again, and remain unphased?
I am rambling. Anyway it was good to hear from you. Your visit has dramatically increased the mean IQ score of the readers of this blog.
I always cringe when you read my blog, which, to this day, remains completely unfiltered by spell checking, absolutely inundated with every possible moronic use of punctuation, and for the health conscious: it remains completely syntax free.
I am impressed in your continuing ability to pass over my vilest and crudist of opinions
completely without comment, which for the most part, are meant to be a low brow attempt at humor.
All the best to your hubby, Kim
Yes, the Olympics are a lot like Christmas and ABBA - way too commercial, but we can't turn away.
As for your spelling, if you can get things right such as "cantankerous old fuck" (from your previous post about our new vice-presidential candidate) then it's no problem overlooking the occasional typo here and there. Nobody's perfect, and at least you take the time to write complete words in complete sentences, which is refreshing these days. (I mean, is it really that much more labor intensive to type "are you" instead of "r u," or does the fact that I'm irritated by text message abbreviations make me the cantankerous old fuck?) Also, remember that I live in a city where native English speakers are the minority, so I am quite used to seeing odd spellings of many words. So I'll tell you what I tell my non-native-English-speaking husband: as long as we understand each other, that's the important thing.
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I don't mean to interrupt the "cuss-fest" here (the next time I hear Dennis Prager talking about cussing and how a foul mouthed lady seems to be more offensive than even a foul mouthed man I will call in and explain that even on blogs (typed out) it seems a bit of a turn off. (Viva-Equality!)
That aside, if either of you are interested in a bit of history on the olympics I highly recommend the first sermon from my pastor - as he is self-proclaimed recovering olympaholic. He is a sports fan, a NCAA referee (rated top three in the west). I believe it is about 30-min or less. After the above conversation, maybe a little church time is fitting? (LoL... sorry)
If you Listen to it, enjoy:
http://www.northpark.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=620&Itemid=211
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Hey, leave her alone. First of all, she is family, Secondly, she happens to be the complete package; beauty, intelligence, personality and wit.
Besides, she only copied my one phrase in response to a comment I made stating that she seems to have a mental filter able of ignoring my vile and crude comments. Actually, I have in laws spread out over the country, and do see them occasionally stop into the blog on sitemeter, and I cringe as they see the discusting pig their unfortunate daughter / sister / niece, etc. has married. AND I was her third hubby...she should have known better.
I listened. It was interesting to hear about the ancient games. I don't mean to belabor this (especially now that Kimba has added a new post that will undoubtedly spark an interesting new discussion thread) but there are still many things that bother me about the whole concept of contests, winning, superlatives, and how seriously we take all of that, and the measures we use to determine who is "better" and "best," and not just where sports are concerned. I guess that's what I was trying to say in my original comment. As for my use of the f word (and my failure to use asterisks in place of the last three letters, which is the way I usually write it when participating in a public forum) I do apologize for the offense (the gender issue notwithstanding). Please be assured that, unlike so many other people I hear these days, I make a point never to "cuss" at work, or in front of children.
Kimba, you must have added your last comment while I was in the middle of writing mine, so I didn't see it until just now. Thanks for the kind words and for coming to my defense. (I'll take the "intelligence, personality, and wit," but as for the "beauty" - you haven't seen me in a few years, bro!) And don't worry - my definition of a disgusting pig is someone who would not encourage or allow other people's points of view on his or her blog. You obviously do not fall into that category. You don't even require the comments to be moderated before they appear here, which is pretty brave of you.
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