Well the Olympics are over and despite all those people who said Vancouver would be hell during the Olympics, things seemed to work out pretty well. In fact, it seems all the premature judging of everything Olympic has so far proven to be wrong. The last hope for the doomsayers to be right is that the Olympics lose a lot of money and the taxpayers get stuck with the bill. And my money says they'll be wrong about that one too.
Meanwhile once the media stopped covering all the pre-Olympic concerns, they got onto the job of telling us how the "Own the Podium" program was falling short of expectations. In the end Canadians did pretty damn good. Maybe we didn't own the podium, but we did get to hear Oh Canada played at medal ceremonies an amazing 14 times. The media response during the games was akin to the half-time show of a football game declaring one team the winner. Whatever happened to waiting for the final result before proclaiming something a success or a failure.The media needed to take a collective dose of immodium to stop the analytical diarrhea.
Okay, I'll admit the mascots did suck.All of this pre-judging negative analysis is not surprising, but it is annoying. The same thing happened in the lead-up to the games in Athens and Beijing. The weekend that the Vancouver games were ending there was an article in the paper saying how bad an idea it is to hold the Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Does the media think its job is to be negative or are they just incredibly inaccurate prognosticators?
There is plenty to be concerned about when it comes to the I.O.C., but it seems a lot easier to write a story predicting certain failure of the local organizing committees than it is to dig into the questionable antics of the I.O.C. Just like it's easier for the media to cover polls and the popularity of leaders in an election than it is to dig into the issues and differences between the contenders.
Yes, that's right. I am annoyed at the media. So put that in your pipe and smoke it.
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