The coverage of the Sochi games in Russia’s Caucus Mountains were unique, to say the least. During the hours of coverage, of which I tried to watch every last bit, NBC managed to score a first in terms of how they presented the Olympic Games to an enthralled America. After the usual tedious affair in which a nation tells its story through interpretive dance, (AKA The Opening Ceremonies,) we got precious little coverage of the town itself and the charms of the host community. Almost every other Olympic Coverage program, throughout Network Television History, has included seemingly endless segments designed to give us more than a glimpse of life in and around the host community. The absurdity of this phenomenon was lampooned beautifully in a 1988 Sports Illustrated cover that depicted an ABC Camera Team holding a sound boom over a daisy in an empty field while a camera man held it in frame, complete with the caption, “further down on the list of things to do in Calgary.”
One would hope that the absence of these types of stories, from which we sports fanatics were so mercifully spared this year, was due entirely to the lessons NBC may have learned in the past. Maybe, previous angry letters about the Four Man Bobsled being preempted in favor of farmers making cheese or milking cows finally got through to the politically correct decision makers who have insisted on making the likes of Rhythmic Gymnastics and Ice Dancing Olympic Worthy Sporting Events.
That’s the hope, but something tells me the reality is much different. Let us not forget that in terms of separating sports from any other topic, ever, is somewhat of a weak point for NBC. I would not be surprised in the least to learn that Bob Costas may have actually had some sort of discharge while discussing the Socioeconomic fantasies of the former Soviet Union during the opening ceremonies. The other reason why I suspect that the true reason for NBC’s new found proclivity towards filtering their coverage to show only actual sports this year, might just be the plethora of photos and tweets sent out just prior to the start of the games by athletes and reporters alike.
Almost half of our citizens today, everyone who votes with the Democrats, will argue that Free Market economics have failed, and that Socialism is the more beneficial way to move our nation forward in the future. In short, they want us to adopt the model of economics used by the people who prepared Sochi for the Winter Games we’d just witnessed. In the end, Private companies mostly from America by the way, those who sponsored these games, had to come in and save the Russian Government’s face by completing most of the unfinished construction within a 48 hour period.
Once more we see the fruits of the free market system being used to repair the carnage left in its wake by the incompetence of Socialism. How many of these perfectly demonstrated illustrations of ours-versus-theirs-economic-systems-in-action must we be shown before we learn this lesson? It’s not the endless out of place editorializing NBC allows Bob Costas to embark upon that ruffles my feathers. It’s not their network’s seemingly official policy to gush on and on endlessly about the virtues of Communism during the winter games that has me so angered. After all, these are the very same clowns that hired Chris, “Tingles,” Matthews and Chris, “Rhetorically Proximate To Justification For War,” Hayes and subsequently gave them hour long slots in Prime Time in order to spout their partisan nonsense, along with Ed Schultz, Rachel Maddow, Keith Olberman, and Melissa Harris Perry.
What angered me about NBC’s coverage was the combination of the two. It was their purposeful filtering of anything which might have painted a truthful picture from ever appearing on their coverage of Sochi, while they gushed on and on about the virtues of Socialism. I can understand not wishing to upset their hosts, in order to keep the access for which they had already paid handsomely. I can understand even that they wished to avoid any controversy, or that they might have believed that politics had no place in the unfolding drama of athletic competition. Clearly however, given that they have shown no qualms of mixing the two worlds previously, or even during the event in question, those points were somewhat invalid. But hey, at least America was more concerned with the freakish appearance of a Costas with a truly bad case of, “Pinkeye,” than it was with the nonsense emanating from his lips. So, there’s always that little bit of hope.
