My friends, I have come to a
conclusion that I would like to share with you.
I hate the Olympics. No, I don’t
mean just the Rio Olympics that are happening even as I speak, I mean I hate
the Olympics as a general rule. Now, the
Rio Olympics are deserved to be hated on their own merits, beginning with their
lying opening ceremony. The designers
claimed the show wasn’t about Brazil, but about the world; yet it was nothing
but indigenous Brazil, Brazil discovered, Brazilian jungles, both natural and
cement, until…global warming. That’s
when I turned it off (and, it was like 10pm; waaaay past my bedtime.) I didn’t even want to stay up to see the
Olympic cauldron lit because, once again, Rio lied to me. I was told that Pele, someone all the world
has admired ever since he appeared as an ace soccer player (no, NOT futbol) in
the 1981 hit movie “Victory,” starring Sylvester Stallone, Michael Caine, and
Max von Sydow, (as the most sympathetic Nazi since Colonel Klink,) would light
the Olympic cauldron. But nooooooo! At the last minute, we were told Pele was too
sick to light the cauldron, so they replaced him with some no-name Brazilian
marathoner! What!?! Why the hell couldn’t they just wheelchair
poor Pele’s crippled body out there with the torch and have him drop it in the
cauldron? Oh, could it be those final 27
steps? Hey, how about you clowns get
with the ADA standards and put in an elevator for the disabled? Jeeze, be inclusive
for once. Anyway, I didn’t get to see
Pele one last time, but at least the U.S. won the first gold medal of the
games…with a rifle!
Ok, enough about Rio, why exactly
do I now hate the Olympics? Recently, I
saw an online video that pointed out that female athletes at Rio are being
commented on about their appearance, not their athletic abilities. They’re described as “emotional,” whereas
male athletes are described as “courageous” and “strong.” The video ends by saying that 45% of Olympic
athletes are women “...And they deserve to be
treated equally.” Here – here! I couldn’t agree more. Finally, someone is brave enough to call out
the Olympics as the embarrassment of sexism and misogyny that it is! This is why I hate the Olympics. It’s high time we started treating women
equally, therefore I am, here and now, calling for a more equal Olympic
games. Why do we have men and women
segregated into “Women’s 100m butterfly” and “Men’s 100m butterfly?” Why can’t women vault the same poles that men
are vaulting? After all, isn’t gender
just an artificial construct? The U.S.
is leading the way by allowing women to enter any combat specialty in the
military, isn’t it time for women to run the marathon alongside men? Can we not just have the “100m butterfly” for
athletes to compete in? Wait, what? We can’t do that because in many sports men
will dominate the pool, or the track, or the road? Well, girlie, I guess you’ll just have to put
in a little more practice to get that bronze medal.
