It’s Sunday afternoon, Feb. 28, 2010. The hockey game between Canada and the USA had just begun. The phone rings. It’s our 23-month old granddaughter Cambria, with a message for her Oma: Go Canada Go!
The game had hardly ended when our excited six-year-old granddaughter Sydney, called from Vancouver: Did you know that Canada won the hockey game? Dad painted a red maple leaf on my face!
Were you excited? Yes! Did your dad jump up and down, screaming and shouting?
He sure did! Did Charlie (her four-year-old brother) watch the game with you? Not really! He found a Swiss hat somewhere he really likes; it’s white with a red cross, he wears it everywhere thinking he is being patriotic!
Did you watch any of the other events? I watched them all! Which event did you like the best? The hockey game! Why? I don’t know, she thoughtfully answered.
The New York Times suggested that ‘men’s hockey is the only gold medal game that really mattered in Vancouver.’
Many visitors were taken aback by the unjustifiable attention and hype lavished by the media and spectators on male athletic events, especially the men’s hockey team.
The spotlight was on the Prime Minister because his guest was Wayne Gretzky.
They feed on one another’s power and popularity, and media hype.
Is my granddaughter taken in by the hype surrounding certain sports and athletes? I worried.
There is a lot of hype in sports today - hype, greed and stupidity. I don’t know how many took notice, but five days into the Olympics, the highest paid athlete in the universe short-circuited the attention of a billion Olympic viewers to mouth an insincere mea-culpa prepared by lawyers, panicky sponsors, and the usual leeches who feed on the famous.
Tiger Woods is the most admired man in North America because of his ability to sink a little white ball into a cup in the ground in fewer attempts than other mortals.
And for this Herculean feat he earns more every two days than the President of the U.S.A. earns in a year.
Plunking a 1.6-inch ball into a 4.5-inch hole on a fairway nets him more cash than the annual salary of 1,700 nurses, or the cost of educating 12,500 students.
One is hard pressed to weigh the act of sinking a little white ball into a cup, against years of pain and sacrifice endured by the Olympic athletes.
By his own admission, we learned that the King of Cool is not cool off the fairway; in fact, he is inordinately stupid: in his marriage, the way he drives, the emails he sends and the company he keeps.
Tiger’s sponsors report that their business is down $5 to $10 billion due to his image problem. The BBC, defending its editorial decisions to make Tiger’s culpa-mea the front page banner headline, stated: ‘As the first sports personality to become a billionaire, Tiger Woods is a colossal figure in the sporting world and therefore of huge interest to many people.’
There you have it from the horse’s mouth: Stupidity notwithstanding, amassing great wealth by duping masses of susceptible people with hype, makes for a colossal figure in the sporting world.
To my granddaughters I say: Yes! Yes! Go Canada Go! Own the Podium!
Aim for gold in the race for a better education, for a sustainable environment, for equality and freedom of speech.
Accept the challenge of respect for others; fight for a more responsible government; enjoy our accomplishment, but don’t be taken in by hype and greed and stupidity.
Charlie, continue to proudly wear other nations’ hats, because our aims and aspirations, our needs and hopes are the same. We are all a child of the universe.
Be patriotic, and know that the ideal Great Ones, the ideal colossal athletes, are those who like the lone, one-legged runner named Terry Fox, enrich others, not themselves.
Harry Wahl
Huntsville