Posted on 02/24/2010 10:26:02 AM PST by CharlesThe Hammer
If you would like a graphic (literal and figurative) demonstration of our nation's greatest failing, sit in front of your television set and watch NBC cover an international sports event, the Winter Olympics, as if only Americans were participating. Every time the Today show's Meredith Vieira stumbles over the name of the Russian figure skater Yevgeny Plushenko (it's pronounced exactly as it's spelled, Meredith, with the accent on the second syllables) and giggles to show that it's OK to be ignorant, I think about all of the announcers from Canada and Europe who pronounce everyone's name correctly. Their employers care about getting it right, and NBC doesn't. Not if the athlete isn't one of us, contributing to the mounting total of "American" medals announced breathlessly every day. Why, anyone would think that these medals were more important than the performance of American students on international comparison tests of achievement in school. In case you're interested, Finland was No. 1 and Canada No. 2 in the most recent international assessment of reading comprehension. The United States was No. 15. U.S.A., U.S.A....
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.washingtonpost.com ...
Like all "normal" sports fans, she isn't taken in by the passionate devotion and grit of atheletes. While they rocket down an icy track at ninety miles an hour, she thinks about dissenting opinions by those pesky conservatives on the Supreme Court..."Oh, that Scalia...damn his eyes!" When the USA and Canada battle it out in a great hockey game, Jacoby seethes because "Finland is Number 1 in Reading Comprehension...we're only Number 15!" Nevermind that other nations test a filtered elite sample of students rather than a broad representation of the whole social strata. The self-fulfilling prophesy proves that "Amerika" is a land of Yahoos.
YAHOOOOOOOOOO! I proudly don my big foamy finger and shout, "We're Number 1!" I'm sure Jacoby is always moping about, long-faced, with her own version of the foamy finger...it's just that hers isn't the same finger.
Seems simple to me......
Just another example of lefties being miserable old harridans and wanting to make everyone else miserable as well.
She can go back to reading Virginia Woolf and criticizing the patriarchy.
It’s the MSM-WAPO viewpoint...you know: the “multicultural-global liberal Ugly American BS’ mentality. Is it our fault that NBC commentators (some of them like Viera) are idiots who know nothing about sports but are experts in celebritard studies. Why are we supposed to be bundled with these imbeciles at NBC?
Agreed. When I listen to a local channel covering a sporting event, that channel almost always has a broadcasting team favorable to the hometown team. Seems that NBC is the hometown team for the Olympics.
I’m glad they provided a picture of the author with this condescending piece of crap. I’m preparing a smarmy elitist identification chart.
Enough of Viera in tights already.
Ok, so she can do it. But should she?
yes
I get angry because they don’t show enough of the Americans. How many family members across the country don’t get to see their athlete compete because the network is showing some story of someone from a different country?
Hmm, bad hairstyle not appropriate for someone her age, horrendous color of lipstick that doesn’t match her color tone, ill fitting cheap blazer... yeah, a libtard.
NBC’s coverage is horrible, and their addiction to covering America only stuff is part of the problem. Like Monday night’s curling coverage they still insisted on showing the American game even though the Americans had already been eliminated and and were playing poorly against a terrible Chinese team, meanwhile within 50 feet of the horrible match they were covering 3 other actually good curling matches were going some with medal implications. And of course they can’t pronounce names like this person said. Then there’s also their complete lack of ability to actually discuss any sport on a sport level, like when everybody was falling down in figure skating did NBC bother to discuss why that might be happening, no they just plodded along with their usual claptrap discussion.
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