Blackspeare

Thanks for the comment, I am glad someone finally realized what it takes for these individuals to attain their success.  Someone like Michael Phelps spends 5 hours a day in a pool to chase his dream.  When did that become a target for caustic comments about corporatism, etc?  After doing something that no one has ever done before, why shouldn’t he try and receive some financial compensation?  At least he’s earned it.

Wait a minute, I watched nearly all the women’s beach volleyball and I don’t think I saw a single breast bounce.  Yes they had skimpy outfits, much to my wife’s emphatic disgust, but my two year old has bigger breasts than most of the athletes.

and almost everything you watch, read, or listen to usually is. However, there are moments you catch glimpses of when an athlete rises above the crass corporate mentality of the Olympics, forgets for a moment who they’re supposed to be winning medals for, ignores the media coverage, doesn’t consider the business deals they can make, and simply runs, swims, or dives just for the pure human enjoyment of it all. Those are the moments that stand out for me.

Say what you will about the Olympics “marketing” aspect, but nevertheless Olympic athletics are the truest form of individual human endeavor.  The athletes have devoted their lives to their one singular quest.  They haven’t bought, stolen or connived their way——just long hard work.  Of course, there might be one or two who did cheat, but they’re the rare exception.

However, if the Olympic athletes make a small fortune on their exploits, blame not them but yourselves for you are the ones who succumb to the marketing and sales hype.

Oh, by the way Phelps will be the first major Olympian not to appear on a Wheaties box——he contracted with Kellogg to appear on the “Corn Flakes” box——now how much was that worth???

I suspect this is Andy’s way of highlighting blatant, shallow phoniness. Not in the athletes, but in the media anchors and entertainers and advertisers who work so hard to upstage them.

Oh, did I mention a politician?

Sports is the focus in the Olympics. Product is the focus in advertising. Human interest is the focus in the media. Whether or not the interest is interesting is irrelevant. If it isn’t, media will create something that is. Just so long as the advertisers are happy, their slot is filled and somebody gets branded.

Its so, oh I don’t know ... Disney?

This is one of those rare times I found it hard to laugh, or even chuckle at Andy’s column. Sorry about that. But I guess I’ve had a belly full of commentators and professional celebrity’s and “peddlers” trying to outshine the shining athletes.

Wasamatter Mizan DuPre, didn’t you make it to the cover? Well welcome to the real world. Most of us don’t.
And here’s the big secret nobody wants to talk about ... most of us never try.

Actually, no, I didn’t recognize it as humor. I did see where Phelps was becoming entangled in the commercial sponsorship endowed to celebrities as soon as their popularity is established. Not to take away phelps’ achievement, this is the media control of what they want us to have and want us to believe is an important part of our lives; basic attention diversion. Same as following college and pro baseball, football and basketball all year long, which when I did so only supported my tendency to become a bigger alcoholic than I was. I wish I knew those many long years ago how to cash out in the system but would most likely have gone the way of carl lewis, who wasn’t as lucky from what I remember.

Another slap in the face of middle class america? Geez, the oilympics mean less now and who gives a ****. This is all corporate bs and the oilympics are the elitist’s sport. Kinka like Carl Lewis a few decades ago that won and won and won but just wasn’t good enough to make the corporate ‘team’. What crap.
Not to mention that these chinese oilympics are geared and tuned to how to put more control on the people and especially the internet.
Phleps who?

By Dr. Knowitall, PhD, PhD, August 18 at 8:11 am

“TW, have you or anyone else thought about the theraputic value of sitting on a riding mower twice a week for two hours with earplugs in your ears mowing down an acre and a half of well fertilized, well watered (by private well) grass?”

~~~~

Aw Dr. Know, quit bragging would ya? Private well, acre and a half of grass, vehicle AND earplugs???

You’re just trying to lord it over us. That’s all this could be about.

Get a disadvantage for crying out loud, or we’re not gonna let you post here anymore.

I’d heard a rumor, which I just now discovered (thanks to Andy) to be more than a rumor. I confess that I was skeptical that nothing of any interest, much less dramatic, whatsoever had ever happened to Tracy. On learning the truth, Tracy was rightly expelled from (playing) games in that case. He had no business even putting in an appearance in the first place, knowing as he must have known of requirements.

Not even a stubbed toe? Ever? After all those times climbing staircases to board diving boards?

As we used to say, “Bummer, man.” Tough luck for Trace, who, apparently, never thought to claim he had a stomach flu only a week before games began, or better yet, a flu that resulted from having eaten food dished out after taking up residence at the Village.

On the bright side, not that Tracy is in need of a “bright side,” Ebersol & Co. will never again seek to exploit him—body and mind—for every single penny and rating point he might have been worth. Ten or 20 years from now, he’ll come to appreciate more his profoundly tedious middle-class background for what it was: utterly worthless under theatrical conditions.

But wait. Hold on. Tracy, or his coach, or family, or girl- or boyfriend, or anyone, failed when none thought to pitch his story for all it’s actually worth: What possibly could be more dramatic than having had to overcome an a-dramatic middle-class background? Kinda like that movie a couple decades ago. Something to do with inside rooms. Who can remember?

Ebersol might have bought that, then worked with it: “And now, ladies and germs, the tragic story of Tracy Klujian, to whom nothing worthy of being labeled dramatic or even half-assed important has ever ONCE happened! Not even a stubbed toe! Imagine the HORROR, if a single one of you out there possibly CAN imagine endless years of Sartrean existentialism!” (Costas turning to Tracy) “Tell us, Tracy if you can put the experience into words, what WAS it like growing up under such oppressive circumstances? And why should any of us give a crap?”

I remember the ‘72 Olympics and Mark Spitz took it all with a grain of salt.  These kids today are much too emotional.  Also Jean Claude Kiley in the ‘68 winter games.  Very sober.

I loved it, Issywise, thanks!

You have a great sense of humor!

Dr. Knowitall, PhD, PhD,

You’re lucky, I’ve had thirty years of therapy for associational sanctimonious, self-righteous, holistic, ober, lost-in-the-woods educator-compulsion syndrome ness or ASSHOLE Syndrome as it is popularly known.  The symptoms are that I pontificate endlessly like a, forgive me, know-it-all in a manner that makes me sure that I’d slap myself silly if I met myself on the street.

Thank God for these blogs. I was raised better than to backhand gormless interlocutors who are all probably ten times better people than I am, even if not so well read.

Didn’t he ever have problems because of his name?

It’s still not to late for him to produce documentation showing that classmates taunted him as “Get-a-clue-jian”, or that a teacher was unfriendly to him, suspecting him of being an Armenian spy….

Sorry, wrong columnist.  Borowitz!

Just havin’ a little fun along with Borasky, Issy. 
I’m getting therapy for my “reflexive moral indignation at the world.”  Sad to say, it aint working, if I even know what RMIATW is.  Imagine, thirty years of “reflexive moral indignation” therapy at $150 a pop and it ain’t working. Not to worry, though, I’ve just signed on to some additional therapy to address that idiocy.

BTW, have you or anyone else thought about the theraputic value of sitting on a riding mower twice a week for two hours with earplugs in your ears mowing down an acre and a half of well fertilized, well watered (by private well) grass?  I know that, if I stopped watering and fertilizing, then I’d have to go to therapy twice a week instead of once.

The downside is, I have to go out and rake up all the dried puss that covers the green grass, but that can be a good thing, too. Nothing like hard work to help you forget your RMIATW.

All satire exhibits a modicum of truth.    But more importantly, being a avid racquetball player, why isn’t racquetball an Olympic sport?  If, tennis, table tennis, beach volleyball and badminton are Olympic events then racquetball should also be included!

Guys.  If I’m mistaken, the “humor” label on the column means it is made up.  Basing your reflexive moral indignation at the world on a joke is….......well, misguided.

A person not allowed to complete because his “story” is too dull would really have to have a dull story. Some of the profiles they’re peddling are astonishingly dull—like the Miami sprinter who concluded her profile by saying, “Big car, big dog—that’s pretty much me.”

And that wasn’t even made up.  “Big house, big dog =self-definition.

Citius, Altius, Fortius is what life’s about.  If we didn’t have “can you top this,” why should we go on living? 

Cyrena, you’re right.  This is why there’s a middle class and why it’s chopped liver.  Why should anyone care?  It doesn’t take millions of votes to win the WH; it takes millions of dollars and craftiness.  Money trumps people.  People are ordinary.  In nobody’s book is obscene amounts of $$$$ ordinary. 

MSM doesn’t want Joe Blow.  It wants Joe Blow ‘Em Up.  IED’s, in the mind of MSM, is the stuff dreams are made of. Perhaps explains why chopped liver in evil foreign countries resort to bombs. Gets the job done and the attention.

That’s what he gets for being honest. He could have claimed any number of losers (from this web site alone) as a family member or three. Then, if they just gave him a medal for every attached drama, he’d need a Brinks truck to drive him home after the Olympics.

Poor guy, see what a disadvantage it is to be relative normal and drama free?