Category Archives: America

UPDATED: Spoiled Sports, Tramp Stamps & Spectacular Speed

Aesthetics, America, Etiquette, Human Accomplishment, South-Africa, Sport

I spoke too soon about American sportsmanship.

McKayla Maroney didn’t look lost, as the Atlanta Journal described the sullen American gymnast. Rather, she looked sour, after botching her dismount “during the artistic gymnastics women’s vault final at the 2012 Summer Olympics on Sunday.” Romanian Sandra Izbasa, whose solid, but less dazzling, performance earned her the gold medal, approached Maroney and put her arms around her. The American stiffened, and looked daggers at Izbasa. The onus was on Maroney to congratulate the winner. Later on, when the time came to respond publicly, Maroney, predictably, suctioned herself to the camera and mouthed the right platitudes. “Supreme finesse” is how Salon’s correspondent characterized Maroney’s belated, phony show of manners.

But then Salon writers frequently create their own reality.

By contrast, Sanya Richards-Ross set the gold standard not only for speed in the women’s 400 meters, on Sunday, but in her gracious demeanor. Richards-Ross is flamboyant but fabulous, reminiscent of Flo Jo.

For a spontaneous, un-choreographed show of sportsmanship, look to Grenada’s Kirani James, not to McKayla Maroney. James, who took gold in the the men’s 400m final, run a qualifying race against “Blade Runner” Oscar Pistorius of South Africa, made his way to Pistorius, hugged the plucky double amputee and exchanged bibs with him.

As for the white leotard that practically dug-into and displayed the contours of Maroney’s crotch: Why?! The other girls wore dark colors that concealed their privates. Cringe-making too are the hugs and rubs the scantily clad gymnasts get from their male coaches. I’m not a complete prude, but that’s plain inappropriate and disgusting.

For ho couture, nothing beat the beach bims of volleyball. Misty May-Treanor, who is as rough as a man, displays a tart tat on her lower back. Real cheap. Here and here are images of the tramp stamps in progress.

Did you too predict the three medalist in the men’s 100-meter dash? It was a no- brainer: Usain Bolt and Yohan Blake of Jamaica, and our Justin Gatlin, spectacular sprinters all.

UPDATE, VIA FACEBOOK: AMM: Why, thanks. The only thing I know is track and field. I used to sprint as a youth, but, in those days, in Israel, it was hard to come by the funds to … buy spikes (the running shoes worn back when…). After racing bare-feet and breaking a toe, I sort of gave up on competing. Ah, regrets. I should have stuck it out. I still run 12 miles a week, but oh-so-slowly. If you have a teen girl; get her into running. You’ll have fewer ho problems (for which, face it, girls are notorious).

UPDATED: USA, USA…

America, Human Accomplishment, Russia, Socialism, Sport

Not even the central planners that run the Olympics could suppress excellence and effort. (In its pursuit of egalitarianism, the Olympics rules committee decreed that “only two members of each team can advance to the all-around, meaning that even if one team is predominant above all others it can only have equal representation in the all-around at best.”)

Although America’s superb athletes may come short in many track and field events, our athletes have dominated the Olympics in the sports that count: gymnastics and swimming. (Who cares about ping-pong?) An American, Carmelita Jeter, became the second fastest woman in the world, winning silver in the 100 meter dash. The Jamaicans are unbeatable; gold medalist Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce a fierce runner.

I confess that the magnificent, down-to-earth Missy Franklin and team swim America charmed me more so than our bionic gymnasts. I am of the old-fashioned mindset that appreciates gymnastics when it balances the artistic and athletic elements. (The Russians still accomplish that, but they’ve lost their stamina.) Still, what amazing athletes these young women are and how impressive is each one’s quest for excellence. (Aly Raisman was my favorite.)

And what does one say about that meteor Michael Phelps? The way he brought home the 4×100-meter medley relay, tonight!!! Supernova.

Comedian Lily Tomlin once said that “98 percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It’s the other lousy 2 percent that get all the publicity. But then – we elected them.”

This lousy minority is the inescapable obsession of the weekly columnist. That’s why it’s so nice, for two weeks every two years – to shunt the kleptocracy to the sidelines, revealing it as the freak show it truly is.

For once, we can look to the unabashed individualism instantiated in the eager young faces, the lithe, lean bodies, the unabashed pursuit of victory.

Go USA. And well done.

UPDATE (Aug. 5): I’m awe struck. So should you be. What a strong, strategic marathon Ethiopia’s Tiki Gelana ran. She set “an Olympic record while winning the event in 2:23:07, fending off Kenya’s Priscah Jeptoo by five seconds.” Anyone who races through a marathon is my hero. That race is mind over matter. I was pleased to see Tatyana Petrova Arkhipova of Russia, who came third in 2:23:29, doggedly hold on to her position in the leading pack.

Enoch Powell At 100

America, Britain, English, IMMIGRATION, Literature, Multiculturalism, Nationhood, Race

Enoch Powell’s famous, much-maligned “rivers of blood” speech has devolved over the years to suit Powell’s adversaries. Delivered in Birmingham, in April 1968, notes The Times Literary Supplement, the famous segment read as follows:

“As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood’. . . . To see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.”

The TLS’s welcome, if marginal, mention of Powell is on the occasion of the publication of Tom Bower’s “balanced critique of Powell’s rhetoric”: Enoch at 100: A revaluation of the life, politics and philosophy.

Helped along by oodles of ignorance, the “foaming Tiber mutated over the years to ‘rivers of blood’, notionally streaming through British cities as the tide of immigration rose unchecked.” (TLS)

As Bower points out, “the official figure for immigrants at the time was relatively small”:

“only 7,000 males every year”, but “the government did not announce that annually a further 50,000 dependants of established immigrants were also entering Britain”.
Powell’s fear was less of immigrants as such (though his “Rivers of Blood” speech contains passages about “negroes” which might land him in [a British] court today) than of a breakdown in “social cohesion”.

“Repeatedly,” it is observed in this TLS editorial, Powell “pointed to rioting in American cities, then at a fearful pitch. Why was Britain inviting the ‘tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence’ of the country?”

Stupidly, the TLS editor joins in blaming Powell’s “oratory” for making “immigration a taboo subject by silencing even reasoned opponents of immigration and multiculturalism who feared being tarnished as racists.”

From the fact that “plain talk about the topic is rare, even dangerous,” the TLS concludes that Powell is at fault.

Oh my!

I do like what Saul Bellow said about the “intractable phenomenon” in the US: “we lack a language in which to talk about it.”

IT being unfettered immigration, also known as “The Suicide of the West.”

Still, I’m pleasantly surprised that the TLS (July 6, 2012) made even marginal mention of Enoch at 100. Surprised because the TLS, once so objective and rigorous, is tilting to tinny, lefty, obscurantist postmodernism. (To modify a Joan Rivers witticism, Why would you want to reproduce a rash?)

That’s one way to reduce circulation, and suck the joy out of English literature (“the English-speaking people” is a concept TLS reviewers now routinely mock or “deconstruct”).

UPDATED: Those Gay Berets

Aesthetics, America, Business, Capitalism, Constitution, libertarianism, Outsourcing, Regulation, Sport

There is an alphabet soup of government agencies that ride American business. Business is buried under regulation, having to expend money and time on licenses, permits and forms for almost every transaction. What with the legal obligation to give an employee practically a lifetime of benefits, who can afford to make these gay-looking Olympic berets in the USA?

Capital flows to where it is best utilized.

I expect the PC patrol to come after me for saying that America’s Olympic team’s caps look campy.

But what’s wrong with a cowboy hat made in Texas? The gay berets cost a pretty penny and look … well, both gay and French.

My sartorial suggestion?

This here “Cattleman Wool Felt Cowboy Hat” costs $26.99.

And it looks American.

UPDATE: I FORGOT TO REMIND YOU ALL: Join the thread on Facebook, if you wish to contribute comments.

Here are my replies to the thread on Facebook:

To GJ: A cowboy hat is militarism to you? Where do you get that? Cowboys used to represent the (dying) great American frontier mentality. The equivalent of a “voortrekker” in South Africa.

To MP: MP is, of course, correct; there is no warrant in the Constitution or in libertarian law for state sponsorship of sports. But I always broaden the discussion to include more than libertarian justice/law—or else there would be little to discuss, as most of what the Federal Frankenstein does is unconstitutional/immoral, etc. And how dull, dour and lazy would that repetition be! But you already know that much about this writer, MP.