The Week in Review

With apologies to The National Enquirer, B-Daddy draws some interesting parallels between it and that other pillar of American journalism, The New York Times.

Suit should perhaps look into a different line of work.

The Supremes (California), again, tred into some questionable waters.

… and what’s it gonna take to get this windmill in your backyard?

Eminent Domain: Chi-comm style

... and finally, a Welcome Aboard!

Tape Delay: Not so bad, afterall.

While it is difficult to shut oneself off completely from the news of the world all day in order to not hear about results from the Olympics until primetime programming, there is at least one advantage, in our opinion.

Instead of experiencing the unexpected shock and anguish of watching in tape-delay real-time the dropping of the baton by both the U.S. men’s and women’s 4x100 meter relays, we read about it this morning already so we should be well-fortified to handle the continuing meltdown of the U.S. sprint and hurdle team.

Counting the botches last night, there have been 4 major blunders now in the past 3 days. 3 nights ago Lolo Jones hit the second-to-last hurdle in the 100 meter hurdle costing her near-certain gold and 2 nights ago, Wallace Spearmon was DQ’d for running out of his lane in the finals of the men’s 200 meters costing him a bronze. Maybe it was the Jamaicans who got into the heads of the Americans in the sprints earlier in the meet or perhaps it’s the rainy weather but the track team has become a collective basket case the past few days.

If You Watched Only One Race....

Its doubtful we have ever seen a more compelling visual moment in these or possibly any Olympics than the seconds following the women’s 100 meter hurdles final last night.

In this race, the favorite, American Lolo Jones, who was at the lead, bumped the second-to-last hurdle and stumbled across the finish line, second to last. This opened the door for American, Dawn Harper to win the race and take the gold…. not that Harper believed it at first.

At the same time Jones was on her knees in anguish, alternately looking up at the video screen to see the replays of the race and burying her head in her hands, Harper was walking down the track looking up at the board with her arms outstretched and a facial expression half-way between “theres no way I just won, this is a big joke, right?” and outright denial as she appeared to be shaking her head, refusing to believe.

Meanwhile, the silver and bronze medallists from Australia and Canada, respectively, were running around, laughing, screaming, hugging each other, hugging anybody within reach…. The results of the race had to have been up for at least 15 or 20 seconds before Harper allowed herself to believe that she was an Olympic champion and the joy began to wash over her as she ran to the stands to grab an American flag to begin her victory lap.



Shock, dismay, denial, disbelief, realization, unrestrained exuberance and gratefulness all on display by 4 women in the span of 40 seconds. Incredible.

UPDATE #1: Video here gives an idea but does not do justice to what we witnessed last night

Quote of the Day

"We Chinese people love the Olympics and support the Olympics, and that's why there are no protesters,"

… and the white wash continues.

If it weren’t for turning on the TV early this morning looking for USA vs. Germany in hoops and accidentally running across a small news item on NBC’s crappy local affiliate which reported on a group of Christians refusing to leave Beijing’s airport until their confiscated Bibles were returned, we would never have heard about it.

Good to know the Chinese “take care of” Bibles the way they take care of dissidents. Story here.


The Chinese promise of setting up “protest pens” for peaceful Chicomm-sanctioned demonstrations was made just to get everyone off their back as there have been, to date, zero demonstrations in the 3 designated venues… one of which is in an amusement park where there is a $10 fee just to get in.

In fact, the Chinese police state can be commended for streamlining their processes to the degree that they don’t waste energy by going out and finding the malcontents, they simply just wait until the malcontents come down to the Olympic security offices to apply for a protest and arrest them there.

Nicholas Krisof of the New York Times decided to take a spin on the protest merry-go-round. His dizzying account of stonewalling, excessive red tape, mountains of conditions and forms all smothered in a thick layer of mind-numbing bureaucracy can be found here.

Amazingly, though, at the end of the article Kristof gets all fair’n’balanced, essentially shrugging his shoulders and implying, “hey, could be worse”… the totality of his little experiment is kind of brushed-off as nothing more than a trip to the DMV. Kristoff: “China is changing: it is no democracy, but it’s also no longer a totalitarian state.”

We don’t want to get into the parsing of political terminology but when we think of a planned, centralized economy, the state being that which "guarantees security and prosperity" (quote from the Opening Ceremonies), young children ripped from their families and taken to Olympic factories where they only see their parents once a year, people being arrested for merely attempting to file paperwork for a protest and a completely empty protest zone, we will just paraphrase a quote used during the primaries,

“China is (still) totalitarian, enough.”

Michael Phelps: Of Chop Strokes and Reversals of Fortune!

Admit it. Its been at least 24 hrs. since you had a little Michael Phelps in your life and you miss the kid with the goofy smile, dontcha?

Still think the Serbian, Cavic, beat Phelps in the finals of the 100m fly the other night? Nice still photo sequencing from SI.com here that makes the case for Phelps.

And what’s that stat about the U.S. having 3% of the world’s population but consuming 25% of its resources? Blame Phelps. You’ve heard by now, perhaps, of Phelp’s daily caloric intake of 12,000 calories but what does all that grub look like? Intrepid Baltimore reporter sits down in a diner and takes a crack at just breakfast and… does not fare too well.

After 20 minutes, he was slowing down and looking tired. His head was dropping.

"He got up, walked slowly to the bathroom," Smith recalls. "I followed, but he shut the door in my face. Everybody in that corner of the restaurant was rooting for him, but they knew this was bad news."

Finally, the white flag came to the morning editor in the form of an email from Segraves' Blackberry:
"Just blew chunks. No way I can stand the smell of this place much longer or I'm gonna heave again. You picked the wrong guy for this detail. Sorry."



H/T: Real Clear Sports

Hey Brucie Baby, how about "Born to (Swim)", instead?

Recall back in 1984, the Reagan campaign attempted to co-opt Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” as a patriotic anthem when Springsteen, himself, advised them it was nothing of the sort but rather a song that told the story of a working-class kid who gets shipped-off to Vietnam only to return to an America of unemployment and disillusion.

(As much as we hated the “youth vote” even when we were youths, we were convinced by this incident that every politician needed a bona fide “youth consultant” to avoid stepping in it like the Reagan campaign did)

Well, according to Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News on Sunday, Bruce dedicated his performance of “Born in the U.S.A.” while in concert in Jacksonville to a kid from Baltimore who gets shipped off to Beijing only return to America with 8 more gold medals, endorsement opportunities, fame and adulation.

... ah yes, how nearly a quarter a century will change perspective on things.

Guys, they're called swamp coolers

NBC, they of that ridiculous stunt last fall when they broadcast half-time of the Sunday night NFL game in the dark to raise awareness as to energy usage/global warming (…. and sent entire news crews to both the Arctic and Antarctic to prove their point) might reasonably be accused of cruising around Beijing in the Olympic town car with the windows down and the A/C on.

Olympic Update

There are a few cracks beginning to show in that candy apple red veneer of what has generally been an exciting and compelling Beijing Games.

The most visible and talked-about controversy is the age, or lack thereof, of the Chinese women gymnasts who took the gold over the Americans in team competition.

Gymnasts must turn 16 in the year of the Olympics or world championships to be eligible for that competition, but records provided for lower-level events showed all three are 14.

U.S. Coach Bela Karolyi has been the most outspoken suggesting on at least two occasions that we saw live on-air, the Chinese were not playing by the rules.

Let’s go to the tale of the tape:

The Chinese gymnasts lack curves, have an average height of 4 feet 9 inches and weigh an average of 77 pounds. Deng is the smallest, at 4-6 and 68 pounds. The women on the United States team, generally more muscular and shapely than the Chinese, are an average of 3 ½ inches taller and 30 pounds heavier.


Yep, they look like they're ready for the junior prom.

Then again, as Matt Lauer suggested at the Opening Cermonies, the Chinese Olympic program mimics those of the old Eastern Bloc nations so one can never rule out forced malnourishment as a reason for general waifishness and underdevelopment.

Of course, the IOC isn’t touching this one with a ten-foot pole, accepting the sensitive-to-criticism host Chinese passports for the gymnasts as legit.

And gymnastics isn’t the only sport where there have been some irregularities in these Games as controversy has visited the boxing and shooting competitions with things breaking the way of the Chinese athlete.

The shooting controversy was of no interest to us but the boxing one grabbed us…

China's Gu Yu caused an upset by defeating Joe Murray, the bantamweight world bronze medalist, on Tuesday but afterwards his camp was adamant he had been on the receiving end of some questionable verdicts.

They implied that the home fighter had been favored.
"I knew what it was going to be like. I've been watching the scoring the past few days and I knew it was bad. So I was expecting it," Murray said.

"They were giving him points for anything but when I was hitting him they were not giving me points," he said.

British head coach Terry Edwards added: "I thought they were very generous to the Chinese lad. You expect a slight bias but you come to the Olympic Games and you also expect a level playing field."

The scoring rules in boxing were changed after the ’88 Olympics precisely to eliminate this sort of thing. It was in those Olympics that Roy Jones beat the stuffing out of his South Korean opponent only to lose on decision. The offending judges came right out and admitted to “feeling sorry” for the boxer of the host nation. The scoring methodology was changed so that individual punches landed were tallied and factored into the decision to, hopefully, eliminate subjectivity as much as possible.

Semi-related thought on these Olympics: We’ve watched the majority of the prime-time programming thus far and we’ve noticed a lack of “outside” or human interest stories on any of the Chinese athletes or of China and/or Beijing itself. No segments of Chris Collinsworth scooting around Beijing sampling the local fare, no stories, thus far, of any Chinese athlete who overcame a famine situation to become a female gymnast on the national team… woops… you get the point.

We’re about a week in and things have been going along smoothly but there have been a couple of eyebrow-raisers in these, the most tightly-controlled Games in our lifetime so we’ll stay tuned to see if the Chi-com grip tightens even further and if so, starts slipping, as those Southern rockers and wordsmiths .38 Special admonished, “Hold on loosely but don’t let go, ‘cause if you hold too tightly, you’re gonna lose control.”

Olympic Update: Stereotypes and the IOC: breaking little girls' hearts around the world

If you did a double-take when you saw the gentleman pictured below on the deck getting ready for the mens’ 4x100 meter freestyle relay a couple of nights ago, don’t feel ashamed… it’s cool. An African-American swimming for Team USA in international competition is indeed a rare sight. Here’s Cullen Jones, though, on perceptions and what he aims to do to change things: “I want more minority kids to go to a swimming pool and try to swim because of me… I want to make a difference. I want kids to say, ‘Look, a black swimmer. And he’s got a gold medal!’ And I want them to get in the water because of it.”



And Team USA’s softball catcher Stacey Nuveman on softball’s Olympic swan song: “It’s sort of the elephant in the room for all of us. We’re focused on the U.S. and our not playing, but we’re not the only ones grieving. There are little girls in Australia and Japan and Chinese Taipei who are devastated also.”

We’ve commented before on the incredibly myopic decision of the IOC to strike softball from the roster of events after these Olympics for the sole reason of U.S. dominance and this quote bears that out. Baseball is just better when the Dodgers and Yankees have good teams… College football is just better when USC, Michigan and Notre Dame have great teams and international softball benefits from having the team from the highest-profile nation on the planet as its standard-bearer. You don’t think team handball’s Q-rating could’ve benefited from a little U.S. dominance instead of the Czechs or Lithuanians or whoever does in that sport? Nice work, IOC.

About Last Night

Pretty spectacular Opening Ceremony last night. The best ever? Probably. In fact, the awesome spectacle provided by the Chicoms and the literally, cast of (ten)thousands reminded us of the poster below from the motivational wizards at Despair.com



It was great to see Jim Lampley back in the booth for NBC. Some questionable personal behavior and wacko political views aside, he has always been, in our mind, one of the top commentators in the business and his fill-in work on Rome’s radio show has always been top-notch. One of our earliest memories of Lamps was him getting tossled-about by jubilant fans outside a bar in Lake Placid in the wake of the mens’ hockey team’s “Miracle on Ice” in the ’80 Olympics. Good stuff.

Matt Lauer on China’s massive and concerted push to win medals at these games which he likened to the programs of the Cold War-era Eastern Bloc nations… “but just the good parts.” And those would’ve been…?

And nice to see Lauer isn’t going with any ridiculous looking hair piece or weave for his obviously thinning hair. Hey Matt, just be done with it both figuratively and literally and order-up a “No. 1” next time you're at the barber... err, stylist. Works for us. And keep rockin’.

China’s program to collect all those medals is something called “Project 119” which as far as we can tell is a push to medal in sports no one cares about.

We’re locked-in for this evening which will be heavy on the swimming and which because of the time change, we aren’t quite sure that what we’ll be watching is live, tape delay from yesterday, earlier today….. The Nagano Winter Games in ’98 were dead to us because of this… hope our personal time change maladjustment doesn’t do the same to these Games.

Beijing '08 Olympic Update

Our current poll question may have received the best answer yet in the form of the U.S. Olympic team’s decision on whom should be the country’s flag bearer. The athletes, themselves, chose Lopez Lomong who finished 3rd in the 1,500 meters at the U.S. Olympic Trials.

Lomong, 23, was 6 when he was abducted from a Sudanese church by militiamen trying to turn children into boy soldiers. He and three other boys escaped and walked several days until they were arrested by Kenyan police because they had unknowingly crossed the border into Kenya.

After a time in a refugee camp in Kenya, he resettled here in the States with a family in Syracuse, N.Y.

Of course, the egg in the face to the Chi-comms is the fact it has close ties to the Sudanese government – a government backing a de-facto genocide in the Darfur region.

Congratulations to one of the “Lost Boys of the Sudan” and congratulations to the American athletes for nailing this selection and making it already the most stunning story of the Olympics.

Article here.

… and in other news today, Joey Cheek, an Olympic speed skater was denied a visa to attend the Olympic games. Cheek, who is a co-founder of Team Darfur, a collection of athletes that are urging China to do what is in their power to stop the genocide, claims he had no intentions of protesting or demonstrating while in China. Lomong is a member of Team Darfur. Check out video below which was passed along to us by ‘Dawg who was checking in from the road.

Old Chick Rules?

Just got back from Vegas and while bloggging will be light as we collect our thoughts, dirty laundry and whatever spare change between the sofa cushions we can scrounge, we will be going with some stuff we had planned but had not got around to.

Immediately on the heels of Dara Torres (41 years of age and mother of one and uhhh… Jewish, apparently) winning both the 50 and 100 meter freestyle events at the Olympic swimming trials last weekend came the whispers. How does a woman at her age coming out of a 6-year retirement accomplish what she has? Jason Whitlock reminds us of the bad ol’ days and the current realities of sports, performance-enhancing drugs and perceptions. His column here.

'08 Beijing Olympic Update (sans the Chi-com mascot)

(One in an occasional series provided during the run-up to the ’08 Summer Games in Beijing, China. Archived posts in this series can be accessed by entering “Olympics” in the blog search box above).

The brutally unforgiving nature of the U.S. Olympic trials was on display over the weekend as 100 and 200 meter favorite Tyson Gay pulled up in a 200 preliminary heat with a strained hamstring. His dream of a 100/200 sweep is now gone…. no do-overs, no mulligans, no byes for outstanding bodies of work. Win and you’re in – lose and you go home. Fortunately, for Gay he qualified for the Olympics by popping a wind-aided 9.68 in the 100 finals earlier in the Trials which is the fastest time ever recorded in the event but not a record because the tail wind exceeded the allowable 2 meters/second.

Everyone, including his competitors, expressed heartfelt emotion towards Gay (a soft-spoken and humble guy in the sprint events that seem to display the most diva-like behavior) and his plight but also to a person and in particular, Gay himself, favored the rigid structure of the Trials believing that to succeed in the pressure-cooker of the Olympics, one needed to bring their “A”-game to the Trials.

And what about Bernie, you ask? You all remember Bernard Lagat, don’t you? We wrote about Bernard here last August. Lagat, a native Kenyan and a naturalized citizen since 2004 won the 1,500 meter finals at the world championships in Osaka. It was the first time an American won the 1,500 at a global event since Mel Sheppard won it back in ’08. Yes, that Mel Sheppard in the other ’08.



After winning the race, here’s what Bernard had to say to the world and his new brothers and sisters: “This is a dream come true. I'm a champion for the United States of America.” “When you're carrying this flag, it means a lot, You're representing everybody, the victims of Katrina, everybody. Those who are serving in the war in Iraq. This is for everybody in the United States.” Pretty cool, huh?

Bernard was the top qualifier for the U.S. at the Trials in both the 1,500 and the 5,000. Obviously, we will be keeping a close eye on how Lagat fares against his formidable former countrymen in these two events.