We Americans aren’t too keen on international competition.
That is to say, we’re not particularly keen on international
sporting competitions; we love international competitions of the
guns ‘n’ ammo variety. United States 1, Iraq 0! Go
team!
But when it comes to nation-vs.-nation sporting spats,
competitions like the Olympics that are designed to foster
international harmony instead of international acrimony, well,
we’d rather watch “American Idol.” Or
“Desperate Housewives.” Or reruns of “Growing
Pains,” even. Thanks for trying, NBC, but we
red-white-and-bluers prefer to keep our sports on the home shore,
where we not only always understand what the rules of the game are
(curling, anyone?), but we can be sure that an American team is
always going to win (except in hockey, which nobody cares about, or
those two years when the Toronto Blue Jays won the World Series,
which we’ve all agreed never to mention again).
We even call the winners of all our major sports “world
champions,” just to preclude, say, a group of Puerto Ricans
from even thinking about challenging the San Antonio Spurs to a
game of shirts and skins out on the blacktop. We used to do this
out of arrogance, but now we do it because we have to. When we
allowed our NBA basketball players to play in the 2004 Summer
Olympics in Athens, Puerto Rico beat them. So did Lithuania. And
Argentina. In 2008 I expect American NBA players to spend the
Beijing Olympics hiding in somebody’s basement, avoiding the
mocking phone calls from Estonia and Zimbabwe.
Needless to say, I’m not sensing a ton of Olympic fever
here in these United States. Whether it’s the sports we
don’t understand, the luge runs that all look exactly the
same, or the unfortunate fact that there are some things Norwegians
““ Norwegians! ““ are better at than we are, Americans
are tuning out the 2006 Torino Winter Games. A week ago,
“American Idol” nearly doubled the rating share of
NBC’s Tuesday Olympics programming. It is expected to do the
same tonight. It seems that America prefers Simon Cowell to Shani
Davis (hint: He’s a speed skater). A lot of people are still
watching, but it’s my guess that many of them simply watch
occasional snippets in detached curiosity, only becoming excited
when the snowboarders are on (“Look! American teenagers like
us! Gnarly!”).
It’s really too bad, because we in the U.S. are getting
kind of a bad rap in the rest of the world. They find us to be an
isolationist brood ““ more concerned with knowing where Tom
Cruise is than where Helsinki is; more engaged in arguing about
whether or not we’re “winning” in Iraq than in
bothering to find out why a lot of Iraqis don’t seem to like
us. If only we put forth an effort to be connected with the parts
of the world we aren’t currently at war with, we might not
find it necessary to go to war with more parts of it, or find it
difficult to get any support when we do go to war.
According to the International Olympic Committee, “the
goal of the Olympic Movement is to contribute to building a
peaceful and better world.” Every two years, before each
Olympics, the United Nations and the IOC call for an “Olympic
truce,” wherein all nations will strive for understanding and
the peaceful resolution of conflicts. Hokey, I know, but sport does
have the ability to bring people together, even in today’s
world. One of the ways that India and Pakistan have been stepping
away from the ledge of mutual nuclear annihilation is a regular
cricket match between the two national teams. More incredibly,
North and South Korea’s Torino Olympic teams marched into the
opening ceremonies under one Korean flag; they did the same in
Sydney and Athens (North Korea didn’t field a team for the
Salt Lake City Olympics). They also plan on fielding a combined
team in the 2008 Games. The Saturday morning cartoon equivalent of
this would be Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny going on a picnic, or
Splinter and Shredder joining a bowling league together. As much as
we in the United States try to downplay the importance of events
like the Olympics, they are plainly of immense symbolic importance
to countries that don’t have other things going for them,
like being the only remaining superpower. Where else can Lithuania
beat the United States at anything? The Olympics level the playing
field ““ an American with skis is the same as a Croatian with
skis, which reveals the shocking insight that an American is the
same as a Croatian even if they don’t have skis.
Is it just me, or does this open up a world of possibility for
future Olympics? If only more Americans would pay attention and
clamor for it, we could take a cue from the Korean peninsula and
march into the 2008 Games together with Iran. We could have
three-legged racing added to the roster of Olympic events ““
only athletes must be partnered with someone from another country.
An Israeli could race with a Syrian, a Chinese athlete could race
with a Japanese one, an American could race with a Canadian. All
three pairings could lead to better relations between the two
countries, eh?
Regardless of whether my enlightened suggestions are put to use,
it would be advantageous for TV viewers here to take a more open
approach to the rest of the planet. Just because Americans
don’t seem to be as good at skiing as the Swiss, or because
Russia’s sequined men are much better figure skaters than our
sequined men, doesn’t mean we should dismiss these Winter
Olympics, or any international competition, as “boring”
or “dumb.” The Olympics are about opening ourselves up
to the rest of the world and letting everyone take their best
good-natured shot at us. We might even learn a thing or two (hint:
Helsinki is in Finland) while we’re watching. So stay away
from Simon Cowell for two weeks, America ““ Estonia is
waiting.
Dan made zero Dick Cheney jokes in this column, even though
it would have been as easy as shooting a lawyer in a barrel. E-mail
him at datherton@media.ucla.edu.