The Golden Bias

I have done what I told myself, and others, that I would not do: spend time watching NBC’s coverage of the Olympics. It’s not that I have anything against the games, it’s just that I find them and the whole concept rather uninteresting. There are certain regular sports I like watching but most of them aren’t featured at the Olympics because they are not enjoyed worldwide. But because I receive only thirteen channels, there have been some nights that I have turned to the games out of boredom and been presently surprised at how interesting some of them have been.

There are certain events I have no interest in watching; like running, which is less interesting to me than NASCAR, which I find to be utterly banal. Another sport that does not interest me is swimming, which I think I learned to hate at an early age when dragged to the local swim meets that my brothers and sister competed in. Even with this whole Michael Phelps brouhaha, the idea of getting excited about watching someone do two laps in a pool is neither thrilling nor rewarding.

I seem to find pleasure in some events others might find dull, like platform and springboard diving, gymnastics and (every guy’s favorite) beach volleyball. But it is clear to see, or rather hear, when watching any of these events, that there is a clear competition, bordering on hostility, that the American announcers and commentators have towards China. This is especially the case when there are American and Chinese athletes involved in the same competition; the commentators always have glowing things to say about the American athletes and make snide often unflattering remarks about their Chinese counterparts, even when the latter is clearly better.

This was obvious in the gymnastics fiasco which resulted in Nastya Liukin taking silver when her score was the same as Chinese gymnast He Kexin. The commentators seemed to have a field day tearing down Kexin as being the lesser of the two competitors and were livid about Liukin being robbed of the gold medal. The bias was also clear when judging the Women’s 10 Meter Platform divers: the American divers were constantly referred to as “spectacular” and the Chinese divers were written off as average or mediocre, when the scores clearly indicated the judges had the opposite opinions. And as for Michael Phelps being the greatest athlete in the world and all the other god-like praise that has been heaped upon him; it seems to me like we are going to refer to this guy every time we, or someone else, needs reminding of how great of a country we are, or to respond to the fact that China has twice the number of gold medals that we do. “Oh yeah?” we’ll say smugly. “Well Michael Phelps won eight gold medals, so there!”

I know that the NBC broadcast is going out to only this country and I haven’t heard what the commentators in China are saying and I’ll assume that they are being just as scathing about us as we are of them. But it is really obnoxious to hear these so-called experts and professionals giving such an unapologetically biased review of the competing athletes. Maybe they are trying to stick it to China, and maybe China deserves it. But they are being pretty unfair to the athletes, who are not involved with politics or foreign policy or anything else that we may feel irks us about the Chinese. I suppose I could just watch with the sound off, but that would make the Olympics even more boring than they already are. They should treat commentators like they do judges and find impartial announcers who will give it to us without their own personal spin. It’s like listening to Bill O’Reilly comment on the Democratic National Convention.