Why I don’t watch the Olympics anymore:

When I was younger I was an avid watcher of the Olympics, loving the international competition with stars from all countries competing. I have lost my interest in the past several Olympics, and I think the reason is primarily the switch in covering them on television from ABC to NBC. NBC is such a jingoistic network its coverage of the Olympics can be described very succinctly: us vs. them. Some examples of this:

> I used to enjoy watching the Opening Ceremonies mostly for the parade of nations, but during the Atlanta Olympics the commentators’ voice-over–primarily that of the arrogant Bob Costas–consisted mostly of reciting all the flaws and scandals of each participating country as they entered, the exception being the United States and its allies.

> In that same Olympics the NBC commentators went to great lengths to degrade both an Irish female swimmer and the Chinese female swim team, both of whom were beating the American swimmers regularly. The commentators tried as hard as possible to paint both of them as obvious steroid users, in spite of any indication of such violations at the time, since how could they possibly beat the Americans otherwise?

> At the conclusion of those games, the commentators picked their “heroes” of the Olympics, one of whom was an American shot-putter who had been suspended for an entire year for steroid use, but had successfully returned to win a gold medal in spite of that. I was totally disgusted that NBC’s shills would attack non-Americans for imagined steroid use but praise Americans for actual steroid use. I guess to NBC winning is all that matters for Americans, while fair play is required of the competition.

> NBC’s coverage is totally one-sided. Basically the only time we see non-Americans perform is in events when Americans are favored, so they have no choice but to show the competition. Whatever happened to the Olympic spirit? The brotherhood of nations? I wonder if other countries are so biased that they only watch the Olympics to see their athletes beat up on those of other countries?