The Olympic Games Multiple Orgasms Have Begun

I just finished listening to a sports talk radio station, that media bastion of reasoned, subdued, articulate public discussion and debate. (I wanted an update on the Burrows-Auger hockey scandal.) Team 1040 close by in Vancouver was the choice. I believe it's 24 hour sports comment and talk, its market-driven necessity only going to prove that the world -- reminiscent of what a comic once said about the "Earnest Goes To .... " movie series -- is going to h e double-hockey sticks in a zamboni. Dave Pratt and Don Taylor were/are the frenzied pom-pom wavers. (Don Taylor had a good, funny sports shtick 30 years ago, but unfortunately he repeated himself early, and every sportscast he's been on in every TV market the past 29 + years has been a sleepwalking copycat production.)

These are editorials, not voiced to any specific call-in listener:

Dave Pratt: "Take your politics and stow it. Whether you're extreme right-wing or extreme left-wing, you have one responsibility and that's to get behind the Olympic games."

Don Taylor: " Whatever your cause, do you think whining about your special interests is going to make people sympathetic to your cause? Grow up."


To host #1: As a citizen with the same rights as any other citizen, I thought my one responsibility was to be true to my beliefs, and from there, to publicly (if I so chose) voice my feelings about whatever the hell I want, including the overfed, nauseatingly hyped, cynically lied-about overbudgeting of the Olympics. It seems your one wish (sorry, "responsibility") is to tell everyone with a different opinion than yours to shut up.

To host #2: It doesn't matter. Not many are sympathetic to causes anyway that aren't part of the majority's cultural desires. Not many like the squeaky wheel, but if there's going to be any change in the conversational paradigm, the one-sided, mindless Olympic boosting ("look at the state of the media consoles, and how much money they're putting into it! Everything's going high-definition and the technology .. everything's digital! People are coming here to have fun!", to replay just a few of the comments from these two), other voices need to be heard. And, hey! what's the problem, a few disenfranchised souls will get minimum wage jobs for a month! Go, Canucks!