The Olympics

[Andrew Dinn]

Teen Age Riot writes:

> I'm not sure what was meant to bear the brunt of your attack: sports TV 
> or sports themselves.  Cuz while there is certainly a helluva lot wrong 
> with the corrupt promotion and marketing of sports, the games themselves 
> are not to blame, and your ranting and raving over their value strikes me 
> simply as someone who has "missed the point.  Entirely."

Sports TV of course bore the brunt of the attack. But I do not see how
you can regard the narrowing, single-minded obsessiveness which has
infected Olympic sport and other pro sports - or rather those who
perform at this level in the sports - as not relating to the TV
coverage and that of course relates to money and, oh yes, capitalism.

>  Who gives a fuck about sports?

Uh, I think I actually said the Olympics. Sports are fine by me. Even
engage in some myself.

> Frankly, a lot of people. I like watching pro sports on 
> TV, and I like watching them in person even more, for the same reasons I 
> like going to my little brother's soccer games, or watching two strangers 
> play chess in the park: they are games, and they are designed to offer an 
> entertaining conflict.  Sports don't need television's sappy melodrama to 
> poke at your emotions, the rules themselves are designed to stimulate 
> you, offer suspense, anticipation, and climax.  This is clearly true 
> not just on a personal level, but to spectators as well.  

I'm just as much pro suspense, anticipation, and climax as the next
man and am quite happy to arrive at such via sport. What I was
objecting to was exactly the sappy melodrama which has come to
dominate most professional sport and which is particularly evident in
the Olympics.

[more apple pie deleted]

> PS- are we forever going to associate any activity that builds to a 
> climax as "sexual"?  Why not just admit that most entertaining things DO 
> that, and simply recognize sex as one of such, an "entertaining thing"?

It's not really a question of whether it is a sex substitute. The real
question is why TV coverage manipulates you in such a manner. I don't
think the similarity to sexual stimulation is absolute but neither is
it incidental.


Andrew Dinn
-----------
And though Earthliness forget you,
To the stilled Earth say:  I flow.
To the rushing water speak:  I am.