An Olympics You Can Actually Stand Watching

I know I’m preaching to the nerdy choir here, but anyone who dislikes Olympics commentary, rah-rah consumerist (“buy our product because we like America!!!) advertising and a 100% USA! USA! USA! centered focus, please check out viewing the Olympics online.

Even at NBC itself you get oodles of uninterrupted coverage (especially of “secondary” events…i.e. no/few/non-competitive Americans), ABSOLUTELY no aural commentary (none!), no commercials outside some stupid GE thing about wind farming, and coverage of events like doubles badminton with teams from Singapore and India.

Watching field hockey between New Zealand and Japan yesterday I was thinking “hey, I can actually begin to like the Olympics somewhat now”.

Sure, in my perfect world I’d have the athletes not wear country-identifying labels at all, and represent just being good athletes instead of some antiquated nation-state jingoism thing.

But having no commentary/commercials (almost none) is a very, very good start. We’ll work on the post-tribalism destruction of individual “nations” down the road.

P.S.: And now I almost, almost understand field hockey. Soccer with a small ball, large sticks and women in post-modern “skirts” bashing the Hell out of each other. Why that combo isn’t more popular in the U.S.A. puzzles me.

P.P.S.: Oh, I forgot to mention the cool fact that in a two computer, one television house your wife can watch every bit of the 12 continuous hours of “team eventing dressage” horse coverage while you’re trying to figure out the arcane serving technique in badminton or how a penalty shot works in field hockey (strangely).