Pedal to the Medal

A Facebook friend recently posted something to the effect of, was it just she, or was enthusiasm for the Olympics just not there this year? I suppose I’ve seen enough of them in the past not to get as excited as I used to – I expect it would help to be British.

That said, some Brits did a surprising amount of grumbling about the Opening Ceremonies show as they called in to local radio talk shows, wondering aloud whether it would be understood by the rest of the world, or whether it was too “lefty” because of the celebration of the National Health Service. But to my mind, it was a great show, substituting imagination for nonstop blow-us-away spectacle. What I don’t understand is why the entire civilized world, except for the United States, got to watch this live on TV, while we had to wait for the delayed, edited, commercial-filled NBC version.

As for Mitt Romney’s comments, I think a little too much is being made of what’s being considered a gaffe. He did provide an honest answer to a reporter’s question about his concerns about the London Olympics; what he could have done is “round it off” with something about how there could be challenges, but it had the potential to be great, etc. Failure to do that was at least undiplomatic.

The latest controversy deals with empty seats at Olympic venues, clearly visible on TV, while many fans were told tickets were sold out. Turns out the seats had been assigned to corporate sponsors, Olympic personnel and the media, some of whom haven’t been using them.  Officials are trying to fill them with off-duty military or schoolchildren and teachers. They’re now talking about possibly imposing a 30-minute limit – if an assigned-seat holder doesn’t have his or her bum in place a half hour after an event begins, the seat will be sold. I have confidence the Brits will get this “sorted,” as they like to say.

OK, so how about the sports, and enthusiasm therefor? I am very proud of our American athletes because of their dedication to their sport, but it’s immaterial to me whether we win more medals than the Chinese (it’s not like the Communist bloc in the old days, eeee-vil).We should do well -- we have one of the biggest teams. And, of course, many American residents compete under the flags of other countries to which they have ties. I was not overly disappointed to see Michael Phelps fail to get a gold on Saturday – nothing wrong with new blood scoring big, especially a fellow American.

As for the events themselves, there are always quirky surprises, like petite Asian women hefting 240 pounds in the weightlifting competition. The fencing was not as satisfying as I thought it might be. I was expecting a long Errol Flynn-type sword-clanging contest; instead, one jab (or whatever they call it in fencing) and the point is scored. At least that’s how it was in the saber competition.

I do hope some of those little countries that only have a few athletes manage to score some medals. Go Nauru!

Choose Your Weapons

The BBC’s call-in radio program, “World Have Your Say,” featured a fascinating pro-and-con about gun control. The pro-gun guests were especially interesting. An American gun shop owner allowed as how he never leaves home without carrying THREE guns on his person. One of the three, he observed, is particularly good for going to the movies with. As you might expect, he believes that if members of the audience in that Aurora, Colorado movie theater had been armed, lives would clearly have been saved, because someone would have quickly dropped the shooter. He was silhouetted against the screen and would have made an easy target. Plus, the gun shop owner added, if the Colorado shooter knew ahead of time that the audience was packing, he would certainly have been deterred from doing his thing.

Unfortunately, that scenario seems a little counter-intuitive to me. What it sounds like is bullets flying in multiple directions fired by a lot of semi-trained individuals. As for an armed populace discouraging a crazy person from launching an attack in the first place, well, uh…he’s CRAZY, right, so would that have stopped him?

Another guest on the BBC show was a woman who decided to train her daughter at an early age how to use guns. The woman said she bought the child two rifles and a shotgun – pink guns, befitting a girl – for her eighth birthday. The daughter was not issued any ammunition until she was adequately trained in the use of the weapons (the family has its own shooting range). The earlier guest on the show, the male gun owner, said children who are trained early on in the use of weapons have much more respect for them than kids whose shooting experience is limited to video games.

Not to change the subject here, but why do I have this sneaking suspicion that some of these kinds of parents are a lot slower on the draw when it comes to sex education? All children are issued “weapons” which often become “loaded” before anybody teaches them responsible usage. True, these weapons don’t generally kill anyone, but improper use can certainly have life-changing consequences.

OK, maybe that’s unfair, but I couldn’t resist.

Unnecessary Roughness

While the late Coach Joe Paterno and several top Penn State administrators appear to be responsible for covering up unspeakable crimes attributed to Jerry Sandusky, I wonder why the NCAA needs to revise history.

On top of huge financial penalties, the organization has stripped the school of its gridiron victories between 1998 and 2011, the years when Paterno and others, according to the Freeh report, agreed to hide Sandusky’s child sex abuse activities to protect the football program from bad publicity. Perhaps someone reading this may have seen one of those games. Did Penn State win, or not?

Typically, colleges are penalized for recruiting violations, unethical favors for star players, letting team members skate on grades, etc. I’m trying to figure out how Sandusky’s alleged offenses, horrible as they were, affected the performance of Penn State teams.

Maybe you could say that if the crimes had been exposed early on, the coaching system would have been disrupted, as Joe Paterno would have been forced to name a new assistant and the school’s ability to field top teams in the wake of the publicity might have been impacted. So, continuing with business as usual would constitute an unfair advantage. That argument may work for you; I’m not sure it does for me.

The school has also been banned from bowl games and will lose scholarships, as well as shared revenue from college football seasons. And current players will be able to take their scholarships to other schools. Observers say it will be the better part of a decade before the football program is back on its feet again. Many are saying, “Fine, football’s too important in what’s supposed to be an academic institution.” Explain that to current students, faculty, alumni, and also the business people in a college town who depend on seasonal income from fans. And, of course, there’s the question of where the money’s going to come from to pay off the lawsuits. How exactly is the school supposed to recover?

All those former Penn State administrators who participated in this scandal should be stripped of all their assets; others who turned their heads in denial of the facts shouold be identified; and whoever’s in charge of hell can turn up the furnace in the section where Joe Paterno may be, and where perhaps Jerry Sandusky may join him. But once the cancer's removed, isn’t it time to stop the radiation?

A Misdirected Gift

I’ve been listening to the live stream of KOA in Denver over the past few days, following the shooting Friday in the suburban Aurora movie theater. The station scrapped its regular programming, including commercials, that day to devote all its energies to covering the news related to the shooting. As the emergency situation subsided, the station shifted to taking on-air calls from listeners to give them a chance to process their reaction to this tragedy. Naturally, there was vitriol directed at the suspected shooter.

One comment, though, was interesting. The male caller said he was praying for the suspect – in its traditional meaning, not a popular point of view at the moment. But the caller then got more specific. He was praying that the suspect suffer. He wanted the suspect to be fed as little as possible, just enough to be kept alive, so that he could suffer.

Those who really want this man to suffer might think about praying for his recovery from mental derangement. He may have no sense at all right now of the horror of what has been done. If and when he returns to his right mind, he can’t help but suffer more intense pain than any physical torture might produce.

One of the tragedies here is the nisuse of a gift. The alleged perpetrator has been described as brilliant. Consider, for example, the level of sophistication of the explosive booby-trap set up in his apartment, and to what good that intelligence might have been applied. If he ever has an opportunity to do good in the future, it will be on a very limited scale, behind prison walls.

Religious leaders often tell us to hate the sin and love the sinner. Since part of our discussion here relates to the movies, I’m reminded of the “The Exorcist,” where the priests, confronted by the taunting, demon-possessed Linda Blair character, are tempted at several points to physically hurt her, a temptation which they have to resist in order to complete the casting out of the devil from the girl. For the average person in Aurora, of course, there will be no loving of this sinner in the near future.

One thing we have to consider in this country is what method those possessed with demons, if you like, are likely to select to iinflict spectacular injury on others for maximum effect. We’re Americans, so it often involves the use of guns – which also means ammunition. When a private citizen suddenly orders 6,000 rounds of ammo, as has been reported in this case, not to mention thousands of dollars worth of tactical combat or law enforcement gear, it might constitute a red flag of some kind. Ya think?

The Reset Button

On Thursday, I was watching the evening news on cable TV. When the first political attack ad came on, I remember how angry I was getting and how I had to switch channels for a minute just to calm down. These ads are supposed to “work,” but at least on Thursday night, they weren’t working on me.

And then there was Friday, and the news from Aurora.

In response, both major presidential campaigns suspended attack ads in Colorado, and, when not canceling campaign appearances altogether, drastically changed their speeches and settings. Why? The shooting in Aurora was as a laser beam exposing the trivial nature of the campaign issues. Do we really care that much about Romney’s tax returns or the promises made by a campaigning or even newly-elected Obama years ago? There are simply more important things to be thinking and talking about.

It occurred to me that instead of suspending the attack ads for one day in one state, the campaigns – and the organizations given new license to spend advertising money by the Supreme Court – have a terrific excuse now to honor the ban for a week, or a month, or – dare I suggest it – make it permanent.

Naturally, the Aurora shooting will revive the issue of gun control – to my mind, a good thing. But instead of the usual grandstanding, can both sides of this debate work on finding a reasonable middle between arming and disarming average citizens?

And could a productive debate over this issue expand into a productive debate about the other big issues that should concern us right now? Does "my way or the highway" seem a little inappropriate at the moment?

Aurora was a hard reboot for our national consciousness. It’s an opportunity to seek a state of balance. We just don’t have to go back to business as usual.

Guns Are Our Thing

It’s a little amusing to me how quick we are in the United States to bash other cultures for odd or even barbaric behavior -- adulterous women being stoned to death by fundamental Muslims, Chinese eating dogs (or Hindus NOT eating cows), etc., when we have ubiquitous guns. It’s been our little thing for a couple of centuries now, and while it may seem perfectly normal to us, it’s not in many other civilized countries.

As expected, the shooting at the Colorado movie theater is igniting a new debate about gun control. Personally, I still think there are things we can do in this area without depriving citizens of their right to own guns. We probably can’t take away those that are already out there, but we could stiffen the qualifications for purchasing a gun, especially a concealed weapon, with really thorough personal and psychological background checks, including social media postings, etc. If that costs more money, make the buyer pay the freight.

By now, it has been well established that we’re in much more danger from armed wack jobs in this country than we are from international terrorists. BTW, there is NO justification for any private citizen owning a functioning automatic weapon.

Any new control measures at best will only slow things down – they aren’t going to make us instantly safe. That will require a cultural change – and such changes are possible, if we have patience. It has taken hundreds of years, but smoking tobacco, while still tolerated, isn’t cool anymore. In spite of anti-slavery laws, it took more than a century to afford black people their full legal rights, and that change is, in practical terms, still in progress. In the case of other countries, can we expect the Muslim world to instantly give up compelling women to wear burkas? So how long is it going to take for guns to be uncool here?

OK, how about some good news: Initial reports out of Colorado say that police are getting good marks for their response to the Aurora shooting incident. Public safety communications systems there have drastically improved over the years, allowing different agencies to talk to each other when a wide-area response is needed. What spurred these changes? Columbine.

We often learn things the hard way, but eventually, we do learn.

Olympic Outrage?

I must be missing a chip or something, but I can only get angry about the Olympic uniform fiasco up to a point.

I can join the chorus, though, of “What Were They Thinking?” For Ralph Lauren to be allowing U.S. Olympic uniforms to be manufactured in China is the public relations blunder of the century – I feel like I can say that with confidence, even though the century has 88 more years to go. But Sen. Harry Reid wants to burn it all, and now many are calling on Olympic athletes to refuse to wear this stuff – if not for patriotic reasons, at least to show good taste, because many folks feel the uniforms are ugly anyway.

As I have noted in this space before, outrage is very satisfying, and the media thrive on it. OK, I get the message that the money going to Chinese workers should have stayed in the United States. I get that it’s embarrassing, because our Olympic team is a national symbol. This hurts especially because China is involved, of course, and Ralph Lauren allowed our noses to be rubbed in it – or those who decided to contract with Ralph Lauren. But we have only to look around us and see how much material that’s an integral part of our daily lives is from China or somewhere else. How patriotic were we when we stood in line to get the latest iPad or smart 3D TV?

Ralph Lauren will get what it deserves – outraged Americans aren’t going to buy any Olympic stuff it has designed – or perhaps even their non-Olympic products. But if we’re really angry about this, let our athletes express it in the competition, by winning as many medals as possible, especially in those sports that Chinese athletes have excelled at in the past.

Jesse Owens made a real Olympic statement for the U.S. with his spectacular performance in Hitler’s Germany in 1936. By contrast, outrage over uniforms seems just a little misplaced. The Olympics are about the games; the rest, when all is said and done, is about money.

Fair Comepnsation at Penn State

Following the release of that scathing report about the Sandusky sex abuse cover-up at Penn State, CNN legal commentator Jeffrey Toobin observed that “wheelbarrows” would be needed to transport all the money the university would have to pay out to the victims in view of the punishment that angry juries would likely inflict in the inevitable lawsuits.

But what of the “other” victims here -- the students, faculty, administrators and board members who were not involved, and even the local community the university supports? Who is going to compensate them?

Certainly, the minors who were directly abused by Sandusky are entitled to fair compensation for what’s been done to them. But how much of a blow can the university take, especially if its insurance coverage doesn’t apply? Will classes have to be cut, faculty and other workers laid off? How about the vaunted football program, which would seem to be an especially juicy target?

Just to start with that, there are students whose opportunity for a college education depends on their ability to play football, and many have gone on to be productive members of society. Is that program now worthless?

It would clearly be appropriate to remove Joe Paterno’s statue from the campus, or at least cover it with a tarp for a long time. But Paterno and the other villains in this scandal are gone now – in his case, really gone. What more can the school realistically do?

When it comes to damages, it could be argued that no amount of money can fairly compensate Sandusky’s victims, meaning that huge awards to these folks would, in the great scheme of things, serve primarily as a symbol of the terrible things that have happened to them and a warning that such offenses will be have dire consequences in the future. When it comes to the money, though, I hope that a sense of balance prevails among the attorneys seeking compensation for their clients (and themselves) and among the civil juries deliberating cases that go beyond the settlement phase. There are others who will be suffering losses for which they have no remedy.

Anderson, We Hardly Knew Ye

We don’t have to guess at this anymore. CNN anchor Anderson Cooper “came out” to Daily Beast reporter Andrew Sullivan.

Though quite a few people knew this about him, the vast majority of us were dealing with guesswork or rumors. As a minority, gay people differ from most other groups in one critical respect. Members of racial minorities are “outed” at birth, and that status is almost impossible to hide. Gender is another difficult status to conceal, as is age, though less so. But “gayness” isn’t visibly obvious; it can be hidden, unless the individual chooses to reveal it.

In Cooper’s case, it represented an act of courage, because it clearly has an impact on his bread and butter: his audience. Those who believe homosexuality is a sin may now have doubts (or have their doubts reinforced) about the quality of his reporting. Some women fans may be disappointed to find that he’s “off the market.” But I would assume that for most of us in the modern world, it’s something we can accept.

The fact that Anderson is gay doesn’t change in any respect the quality of his reporting, his integrity or his bravery at war or disaster scenes. Those are facts that his audiences have seen with their own eyes. Sexual preference, when reduced to its essentials, “is what it is,” and doesn’t imply political positions or agendas. Blacks and Latinos complain often that they are treated as monolithic blocs by politicians, while the only real common denominator, in the end, is skin color. Culture is a factor, certainly, but that’s a social construct and can change over time. There are plenty of right-wing blacks and Latinos, as well as gay Republicans, whose voices are heard much more often now.

Homosexuality is not unknown, of course, in the rest of the animal kingdom, especially among mammals. Far from being a crime against nature, it actually seems to be part of nature. As for whether it’s “normal,” that word is interpreted by many to mean “correct” when it really should be “most common,” and as I have said in this space before, defining what’s “normal” (if you mean “correct”) in human sexuality is a treacherous road to go down.

So, thank you, Anderson, for clearing things up, and allowing us to move on – most of us, anyway.