Yesterday on the national nightly network news, we saw the United States' best downhill skier apologize for having competed under the influence of alcohol. We were stunned. "That's incredible," we said out loud. "they put this on the fucking
news?" It's time we made our official position on this matter clear, and this is it: we couldn't give less of a shit.
As far as we can tell, here's the whole story. Some guy, who is very good at a sport no one watches, recently confessed/bragged that he'd raced while drunk. We haven't heard anyone suggest this is illegal. It's probably not even against the rules of the sport. The two principal arguments against competing drunk are that a) booze is not typically considered a performance enhancer and b) it sets a bad example for the kids who look up to professional skiers — and let's face it, there are probably fewer than a hundred such kids in the whole country, and they aren't exactly our brightest hope for the future.
So a skier got drunk. And that wasn't even the story. The story was his apology for getting drunk. This non-event couldn't have kicked up a tempest in one of the tiny tea cups in our kid sister's dollhouse kitchen. It was not news. So how did it find its way into the newscast? Our theory: somebody at the network either thinks there's an Olympic Fever pandemic on, or else hopes to start one.
Good luck, network somebody! The Olympics are the boringest event in sports. They comprise an extensive collection of individually unwatchable events rolled up into one vast and seemingly interminable pageant of monotony, bookended by embarrassingly tacky ceremonies featuring children in humiliating costumes. It sucks.
In the summer, Olympics viewers thrill to the spectacle of the world's greatest swimmers of laps! As they swim laps! For fucking hours! What can happen? One lap-swimmer can be a little faster than the others. It might be very very close. It might be somewhat less close. That's the entire range of possibilities. A competitor cannot be outplayed, or outmaneuvered, or outstrategized, or drowned.
The winter games are somewhat more exciting, as they feature more variety. Watch as people of all the world's participant nations slide down frozen hills on a variety of sliding implements, sometimes in groups! Here, competitors can not only be a little faster than each other; they can also fall down. This easily adds 170 seconds to the time a home viewer will wait before changing the channel to something more captivating, like a Maury Povich rerun. Darnell, you are not the father.
Look, we understand that Olympic athletes have made great sacrifices and displayed great tenacity and determination to train their bodies to excel at all the boring shit they do. The Olympic Games are, we have no doubt, a momentous and emotional culmination for them and for their families. But guess what? When we painted our living room, it was a big deal to us, but we understood that speed skater Dan Jansen wouldn't want to watch it on TV for a fucking week.
And this so-called "story" about the guy who apologized for getting drunk and sliding down the hill — this doesn't even qualify for the dubious distinction of "Olympic news," since (thank Odin) the Olympics are not currently ongoing.
You can tell, because while the games are in progress, there's a spike in book-buying and consumption of knitting yarn, corresponding with millions of Americans finding something else to do.
No, this "news event" was just something a drunk skier's publicist dreamed up. How the national media even noticed it happening is an unsolvable mystery. Network poobahs, wtf? This character probably has a web-log; let him post his important bulletin there, where it will be seen by everyone who cares.
It's not exactly like it's a slow news season. The President is conducting illegal spying ops on American citizens without obtaining warrants. There's a "war" on. Yesterday judge Alito was still being interviewed for his Supreme Court nomination hearings. They're dying from bird flu in Turkey. Iran's making nukes. We even heard something about an election in Canada, though it's probably been postponed in the wake of this scandal that has rocked the winter sports enthusiast community to its core.
But who knows? Maybe tomorrow the skier's publicist will email the network about some of this stuff. We can hope.
Incidentally, we wrote this article totally tanked on Scotch. We wish to apologize to our loyal fans, and to all the kids out there who look to us to set an example for them. We have sent an appropriately contrite taped statement to the media. Watch for it on your evening newscast.