Columnist likens Vancouver Olympics to 1936

All Olympics, World Cups, etc. are celebrations of the hosting nations. Canadians have a lot to be proud of and display for the world. I can't say what they did was that much different than other big events.

 

I was thinking the same thing. The Canadian media will focus on Canadian athletes, shocking, I know. Did NBC cover anyone whole heartedly that wasn't American? And his criticism of the Canadian media not doing any follow on the luger's death is absolutely false. CTV did a number of stories on it and and it was brought up through out the games, I believe the wire had a new story every bloody day on it, and it was easily the biggest story through the first half of the games. What the hell was he wanting?

I read far too many of these damn columns from American and British columnists slagging Canada for the quality of the games and our sudden nationalistic pride. They can all go suck an egg.

Yeah these games did bring the country together, and you know what we damn well needed it. As much as any non-warring country we are a fractured nation where from region-to-region we don't exactly see eye-to-eye on many things, to the point where there is a hell of a lot of intolerance for a nation of 33 million people. Hell the nearly successful Quebec referendum wasn't that long ago, and every time the Liberal party won another election it stirred up talk and momentum for an Alberta separation party or mandate -- even if they never gained much traction. And those are just the tip of the iceberg. For a nation that prides itself on its acceptance of others and it's politeness/humbleness, there is a lot of deep seeded frustration boiling underneath the skin. For two weeks though we finally were, for the most part, united. And it was great. Even if it only lasts until our next federal election, it was well worth it.

 

I just wonder when people will learn that comparisons to Nazism should never be made, unless you got a siutation with oh, about 5 million murders.

 

In the early days of Pamela Anderson's stardom, I assume that several million Canadian kittens were killed annually.

 

This column's worse than the Paige one based on the Hitler idiocy alone. Paige's problem was that he apparently wrote it in advance (or without stepping outside the press center), because the Mormon missionary fervor he lamented was nonexistent in Salt Lake. The LDS showed remarkable restraint in that regard. But Woody wasn't going to let that fact get in the way of a dig.

 

Sieg Heil, baby!

 

Definitely an extraordinarily patriotic Olympic Games, both in terms of concept (private funding) and performance (thanks for not showing up, Soviet Bloc!). And yet, these Olympics, much like Vancouver, were in no way reminiscent of Berlin '36.

In fact, this might be the only one that was:

 

Not reminiscent in the strictest terms, because the '36 Winter Olympics happened first.

 

Is 1936 the only year one country hosted both the winter & summer games?

 

Nope, it happened in 1924 (Chamonix, Paris) and 1932 (Lake Placid, Los Angeles).

 

The nice thing about the Olympics is that they tear down the borders we feel as citizens of different nations and remind us what unites us as one global people:

 

You weren't there. Prove it.