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U.S.
media delivers gold medal Back when I was in third grade, I used to pick fights with the other third graders because I knew my brother in sixth grade would back me up. Canada has always been like that pesky third grader with its American brother lurking in the background. Think about it. Why aren’t Canadians scared of nuclear war? Because the States will be there to protect us. What about Canadian foreign policy? In a nutshell, our foreign policy consists of blindly following the United States into whatever they are doing. Our economy is based on a free trade system with our big brothers. We even rely on the good ol’ U.S. of A for our television programming. Could you imagine if we had to watch Canadian shows all the time? Now, our big brother has helped us get a gold medal at the Olympic winter games. Imagine these Olympics were being held in Nagano, Japan, like the 1998 games. Now imagine that a Bulgarian figure skating pair is in a heated battle with a Russian pair for supremacy and the Russian pair has a minor mishap but still manages to win the gold medal. Would there have been the same outcry from the American media? I think not. And even if the media had made such a stink, would the International Olympic Committee and the International Skating Union be forced to give the pair a gold medal? Once again, the answer is a resounding no way. But this year, the Olympics are in Salt Lake City, where the almighty greenback and the almighty American media reign supreme. And lo and behold, a Canadian pair with movie star good looks and moxie to boot are beaten out of a gold medal in a close and controversial decision. NBC, USA Today and CNN sense a story and come running to the rescue. Instead of focusing on athletic achievement, these media pundits focus on the injustice of the games. The story becomes so big that there is no choice but to give David Pelletier and Jamie Sale of Canada a gold medal. Did Sale and Pelletier deserve the gold medal? Maybe, but that’s not even the point. The folks at NBC are not figure skating experts, and even those who are experts have an obvious Cold War bias. Those Russians couldn’t possibly have won, they’re the hated Russians. But who knows? Maybe the Russians skated a more difficult program. Maybe that slip on Anton Sikhurlidze’s double axel was minor enough that they still could have and should have won the gold medal. I don’t know. But neither do Paula Zahn or Tom Brokaw. The point is that for years figure skating has been a sport full of injustices. That is what happens when judges decide the winners and the losers. In the 1984 Winter Olympics, Scott Hamilton of the United States won a suspect gold medal over Brian Orser of Canada. Did our American brothers make a big deal over that call? The answer to that one is obvious. As long as there are figure skating competitions, there will be controversial decisions. Maybe the IOC and the ISU got this one right, but if the situation were reversed, no one would have cared. So we as Canadians have to sit back and thank our American media friends for this gold medal. Without you this couldn’t have been possible. Perhaps, the IOC shouldn’t have only awarded gold medals to Sale and Pelletier. I think Dick Ebersol from NBC and Bernard Shaw of CNN should have gotten one too. This wouldn’t have been possible without you.
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TCU Daily Skiff © 2002 |
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