Newsflash: George Bush Responsible for USA Olympic Basketball Demise

[MavKikiNYC]

From the Jodie Valade of the NYTimes.

W.'s Big Fat Greek Pride
By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: August 19, 2004


The White House has become the palace of paradox.

The war that was supposed to let us swagger and strut in the world is impeding our swagger and strut in the world.

As Selena Roberts wrote in her "Sports of the Times" column on Tuesday, American athletes in Athens are trying so hard to curb their usual chesty, preening, flag-waving behavior, in accordance with the U.S. Olympic Committee's fears about security in an anti-American climate, that it may be dulling the American team's edge.

"It does not reflect well on American culture, but some United States athletes need to pound their chests to get their hearts racing," Ms. Roberts writes. "Some need to scowl, stare and pump music into their heads to accompany their defiant strut before the start gun. Somehow, intimidating others is motivating to them."

Of the street-tough, hip-hop bad boy Allen Iverson becoming a model of lackluster conformity in Athens, she wondered, "Who body-snatched this man?"

Even our warlike national anthem has been transformed, from blaring horns to peaceful, soothing strings.

The basketball thing is a disaster. If there's one sport we were always dominant in, it was basketball. Basketball was invented in this country. And now we're losing to Puerto Rico and struggling against Greece, while thousands of gratified Europeans in the stands jeer U.S. stumbles.

Puerto Rico beat us? It's as if the Jamaican bobsled team beat the Austrians.

It was impossible to believe before this week that if you had Allen Iverson, Tim Duncan and Carmelo Anthony, with LeBron James coming in from the bench, that we couldn't beat any five guys in the world. Yet we were trounced by one of our territories. And the Greek national basketball team, which didn't even qualify for the Olympics and got in only because Greece is the host country, nearly beat us, as the rancorous crowd booed whenever the Americans got the ball.

The world cannot get enough of our big, cocky sports millionaires on the losing side.

Just as President Clinton entwined himself with the Olympics in Atlanta during his re-election campaign, President Bush has attempted to latch onto the Greek Olympics, running an ad in which the flags of Afghanistan and Iraq are shown as a narrator boasts that at "this Olympics, there will be two more free nations, and two fewer terrorist regimes." (Not to mention more terrorist acts in the world.)

But if the Olympics aren't working as a P.R. tool for the country, how can they work as a P.R. tool for the president?

"The Americans are groping for an identity," Ms. Roberts muses. "Who are they without their trademark 'tude?"

Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld thought they could change the American identity by invading Iraq, that they could toughen up our 'tude and remove the lingering post-Vietnam skittishness about force and "blame America first" psychology.

They thought our shock-and-awe war would change America's image, adding some muscularity that would make Arab foes cower and the world bow down to the U.S. as an unassailable hyperpower.

The vice president and the defense chief have changed our identity and image in the world - but not in the way they envisioned.

Our athletes are swaggering less and trying to be more sensitive to other athletes.

Iraq is making us wring our hands over whether to blast our way into Najaf and Falluja, quavering with uncharacteristic sensitivity even as the White House fires verbal mortars at the domestic enemy, John Kerry, for suggesting that we be more sensitive.

The presidential race seems frozen in some weird way, with no one breaking through, and the polls showing the candidates locked in a virtual tie.

George W. Bush can't defend the mess he's made in Iraq, and John Kerry can't effectively attack Mr. Bush on Iraq. He has fallen into the president's trap and foolishly agreed that he would have given Mr. Bush the authority for the war even if he had known there were no W.M.D. and no security threats to the U.S.

Barack Obama was wrong that "there's not a liberal America and a conservative America." There is a liberal and a conservative America, and Mr. Bush is happy to govern only one of them.

The new Pew Research Center poll finds the country ever more divided. "The public takes a paradoxical view of America's place in the world," the poll reports, with 45 percent of Americans saying the U.S. plays a more important and powerful role as world leader than it did 10 years ago, and 67 percent saying the U.S. is less respected.

The president who promised a humble foreign policy ended up with a foreign policy inflated by hubris - which is, after all, a Greek idea.

[madape]

I think John Kerry is responsible for Maureen Dowd being a dumb-ass BEEEAAATCH!

[LRB]

Maureen Dowd doesn't have the sense God gave a rock. She makes Steve Francis look like a freaking genius. And then she dumb enought to criticize one of the smartest and most appealing democrats in her blind stupid hatred of Bush. To call her a bitch would be to insult all bitches.

[knowitall]

Wow, there's a whole lot of hate on the republican side. Sounds like gang mentality. You said yourself that she bashed Kerry.

[LRB]

Originally posted by: knowitall
Wow, there's a whole lot of hate on the republican side. Sounds like gang mentality. You said yourself that she bashed Kerry.

No, I didn't say that she bashed Kerry. Kerry is hardly the smartest nor the most appealing democrat. That title goes to Barak Osama. And it doesn't take much to hate anything as stupid as Dowd wrote. But it does sound like you've drunk the far left (read Michael Moore) liberal Koolaid with you accusations of "gang mentality" with not a direct comment on the ridiculous and hate filled opinion piece written by Dowd.

[Mavdog]

The real question is who is responsible for Jodie Valade keeping her job when she clearly masquerades as a sports reporter. Her work at the DMN was not up to snuff, it was great to see her leave.

[knowitall]

The only thing i've seen is Roger and me. I didn't watch the convention, so I don't know who that other person is. I don't think it's right to thrash anyone. But, there is some real hate out there, wouldn't you agree?

[LRB]

Originally posted by: Mavdog
The real question is who is responsible for Jodie Valade keeping her job when she clearly masquerades as a sports reporter. Her work at the DMN was not up to snuff, it was great to see her leave.

OK here's a point that I can agree with you on Mavdog. Although I will refrain from speculating on just how Jodi Valade kept her job.

[LRB]

Originally posted by: knowitall
The only thing i've seen is Roger and me. I didn't watch the convention, so I don't know who that other person is. I don't think it's right to thrash anyone. But, there is some real hate out there, wouldn't you agree?

Of course there's a lot of hate. As a certain gay comic on "Last Comic Standing" would say, "It didn't take Scooby Doo to solve that mystery." However in the hate department any here on this board are pure amateurs compared to Dowd who is a professional hater. She's paid to write hate filled columns.

[knowitall]

I guess that's fair enough. I not sure because I've never heard of her.

[LRB]

Dowd is a regular writer at the NY Times whose columns are regularly brought to us by the D-M.com NY correspondant, MavKikiNYC. The NY Times BTW is a self-described (by one of their senior editors) as a left leaning paper.

[knowitall]

I did not know that. Thank's for the heads up. I don't read that paper anyway.

[knowitall]

The only paper I read is the Village Voice! ha ha Just kidding.

[Drbio]

Originally posted by: Mavdog
The real question is who is responsible for Jodie Valade keeping her job when she clearly masquerades as a sports reporter. Her work at the DMN was not up to snuff, it was great to see her leave.

Damn. I had to agree with 100% of a Mavdog post.

edit - > [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-tongue.gif[/img]

[LRB]

Originally posted by: Drbio

Damn. I had to agree with 100% of a Mavdog post.

edit - > [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-tongue.gif[/img]

Hurts doesn't it. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img]