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08/10/2004: I don't care about the Olympics....
I'll be watching the Cardinals successfully campaign for the National League Central Division title, which is much more important. But I wonder about the howls we'll hear from Right Blogistan when U.S. Olympic athletes get booed.
A caller to KRON-TV anchor Gary Radnich's KNBR Radio show in San Francisco one morning recently raised a disturbing prospect -- one that's more than a bit worrisome to NBC-TV.
Television coverage of the Athens Olympics start at 8 p.m. Friday on NBC; the well-informed, seasoned traveler who called Radnich wanted to discuss something that hasn't been talked about much in the U.S. media. So far.
"I wonder how many Americans," said the caller, "have any idea how our athletes are going to be booed in Athens at the Olympics." Probably not many, given this country's dismaying lack of interest in anything outside U.S. borders.
In a recent letter to the editor in The Press Democrat, a Santa Rosa teacher who'd just returned from a year in Norway as a Fulbright Scholar wrote of the widespread anti-American sentiment she encountered because of the unpopular war in Iraq.
Last spring, on a visit to British Columbia, I found the Canadian press filled with a level of anti-American sentiment I'd never seen, even having lived up there.
It's not a pretty picture facing U.S. Olympic athletes.
The specter of widespread boos in Athens every time "The Star-Spangled Banner" is played is not far-fetched -- and is much on the minds of the people at NBC. The possibility of the American team's being lustily booed as it enters the Olympic Stadium on Friday night also makes NBC cringe.
Len on 08.10.04 @ 01:05 PM CST
