Columnist likens Vancouver Olympics to 1936

Evan Lysacek. His dark complexion scared the crap out of Canuckistanis.
[/formerborderkidnowduckingfromhisCanadianbuddies]

 

Reminiscent of the column Woody Paige wrote taking out Salt Lake City 2002 Olympics. He started by calling the games " a massive Mormon marketing scheme." Obviously did not sit well with the citizens of Utah and page was required to apologize.

Could not find column but did find good background story on Salon.
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/sports/col/barra/2002/02/27/utah/

 

The "rip the town holding sports event/home town of your paper's town's rival in big game or series" is the second-lamest device in column writing.
Number one would be the bullet point "I was just thinking..." dodge.

 

Anyone have a copy of that Paige column? Be interesting to compare.

 

True. However, that didn't stop my desire to see this discussion take place. As others have mentioned, LeBreton made some valid points but the choice of comparison was poor.

You might like to post the link to his apology to actually contribute to the discussion?

 

The Paige column has famously been pulled from Lexis/Nexis and The Post archive and is almost impossible to find anywhere online. I have a copy of it that I held on to when I was in SLC. It's buried somewhere in my basement.

I'd challenge anyone to find it online.

 

Actually I think a discussion of which Olympiad has been the most nationalistic would be kind of interesting.

I don't suppose anyone here was in Moscow in 1980?

 

Agreed. But what makes this especially bad was that readers would have to take his word for how much he has suffered under the facist regime because you had to be there to be subjected to the jackbooted Canadamania.

 

This was the money shot from Paige column:

"Visit beautiful Colorado. We won't force you to take a religious brochure at every street corner, make you eat lime Jell-O at every meal, coerce you into joining a private club to enjoy a drink or buying a bottle from a state-owned liquor store, ask you to worship a salamander and a sea gull, marry three of your mother's cousins, consider you inferior if you're not a white, a man, or heterosexual ... and wear weird underwear under your parkas and ski pants."

 

They were making people eat poutine at gunpoint you know.

 

Hitler's Canada actually sounds a lot like SEC or Big 12 football.