Oh, heavens, let's not offend the Chinese. Why not? In 1980, the United States was only too happy to boycott the Moscow games. But that was so 20th century. Nowadays we don't snub great nations like we used to—particularly not great nations to whom our great nation is up to its neck in debt.
Still, whatever our political leaders might have done in 1980 (and had done to them in 1984, when the Soviets boycotted the Los Angeles games), or whatever President Bush didn't do in 2008, why must America's big Olympic sports organization, as well as its big Olympic TV network, be so obsequious toward China? Is it because giant media companies like NBC and venerable organizations like the United States Olympic Committee want to project a certain, what, high-minded multiculturalism? I doubt it.
To me, NBC's gushing about the "new" China sounded like kissing ass—as in kissing the boss's ass. In fact, if I weren't already terrified of China's rise as an economic superpower, I would be now, after watching NBC's propaganda-ridden coverage of the Beijing Olympics. When Matt Lauer and Bob Costas start telling me how much there is to love about China, "despite," Costas says, "its troubling human rights record," I figure I'm hearing company policy.
Apparently, or so the message goes, the Chinese are no longer a super threat to our super power. No more the red horde looming. Seems they got pretty handy at business. American-style. A big, polluting industrial empire. A burgeoning middle-class. Plenty of cash to throw a big party for the world. Kind of a coming-out party, really.
China's opening ceremony was all the rave with the media. NBC's commentators were keen on China's display of synchronized human motion, as thousands of performers worked in unison. Such reviews flirted closely with an offensive stereotype from the old days of hard-line anti-Chinese propaganda: "Perfect cooperation! Utterly selfless teamwork."
Cooperative, maybe. But dirty, it appears. Indeed, events conspired against NBC and its desire to treat modern Beijing as if it were an animated set in a Disney movie. Leading up to the opening ceremonies, reports about China's staggering air pollution drew attention to a problem that, with stars like Ethiopian marathoner Haile Gebrselassie pulling out of the Olympic marathon from fear for his health, would be harder to ignore than China's treatment of political dissidents. The media covered the pollution story, albeit without much appreciation for the grandeur of the pollution, the economic explosion that fuels it or, grandest of all, China's response to bad PR, shutting down the factories to temporarily clean-up for prime time.
The USOC stumbled just before the games began when, having been issued masks with which to protect themselves from bad air—masks supplied by the USOC—four American cyclists were photographed actually donning the masks while still collecting their luggage at the airport in Beijing. The USOC immediately pressured the offending athletes to apologize to their hosts. USOC Chairman Peter Ueberroth explained, "You never want to go into someone else's place and cause any embarrassment." Heavens, no.
Speaking of embarrassing visitors, NBC has missed little chance to showcase our President Bush's attendance at the Beijing games. Lauer & Co. might be too brain-dead to see what it all means, but New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd got it dead-on: "What was so galling about watching W.'s giddy sightseeing at the Olympics was that it underscored China's rise as a superpower and, thanks to the administration's derelict foreign and economic policies, America's fade-out& While America has been bogged down and bled dry, China and Russia are plumping up. China has bought so much of America that we'd be dead Peking ducks if they pulled their investments out of our market…"
But, heavens. Let's not offend the Chinese.
Why?
Because they own us.
