Winter Olympic Meltdown

Overall, the Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina were more enjoyable than the 2022 Beijing Winter Games, but then the Chinese Communist Party didn't exactly set the bar high.  But of course, leave it to members of Team USA to ruin whatever enjoyment we viewers managed to derive from watching the competition.  Back in 1998, when women's ice hockey debuted at the Nagano Winter Games, it was believed that men played ice hockey and women couldn't.  The American teams proved that, here in the U.S. at least, the opposite was true.  The women's team, having won the gold medal that year, got to meet President Clinton at the White House; the men's team, the first one staffed by National Hockey League professionals and having been eliminated from medal contention, wrecked their rooms at the Olympic village in Japan like British rock stars playing the Tokyo Budokan would wreck their hotel rooms. They were bad losers.

In 2026, they were bad winners.  After their win over Canada for the gold medal, the American men's ice hockey team partied hearty in the locker room and received a phone call from Donald Trump. Trump invited them to the White House and added that he had to invite the women's team, who won their gold medal in a game with the Canadian women, otherwise "I do believe I probably would be impeached."  The men laughed uproariously and delivered salutatory dittos while FBI Director Kash Patel (WHAT?????) downed a bottle of beer in their company.  

Trump didn’t invite the women's ice hockey team to the White House, despite his insistence that he did, but they saved him the trouble by declining an invitation.  The men's team not only showed up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, they showed up at the State of the Union address to be celebrated as representing the best of America.

Yes, the U.S. men's national ice hockey team represents and embodies America - literal locker room talk, misogynistic attitudes, toxic masculinity, and overall boorishness.

And by the way, we have no business to celebrate the U.S. men's ice hockey team's recent achievements.  David Rothkopf pointed out something quite disturbing.  The last time the men's team won the Olympic gold medal, Rothkopf noted, they defeated the Soviet Union for a berth in the gold-medal game, and their victory was sweet because it marked the triumph of a country that stood for freedom over a country that stood for tyranny.  Today, the U.S. victory over Canada in the gold-medal men's ice hockey game marks the victory of a nation representing authoritarianism over the country fighting to save freedom - Canada, meaning that, whereas the Americans won the gold medal in men's ice hockey in 1980 as the good guys, this time they won it as the bad guys.  The same would hold true for the American women's victory over the Canadian women, except for one thing - the American women aren't part of Trump's vision of an America made great once again.  I think he just made that well understood.

Meanwhile, I found out one thing about the Milan and Cortina Winter Games that is, in fact, worthy of satire.  The medals minted for the top three finishers in each event are of lesser quality than medals of previous Games.  In other words, they break off their ribbons and break in two when they hit the floor.  For all the money spent on the Olympics, you'd think the International  Olympic Committee would have spent more on quality control for their prize hardware.  Alysa Liu had her team-figure skating gold medal break on her, and she had to return it for a new one.  So, everyone is pleased as punch that the American men's ice hockey team won the gold medal, though . . . when you get right down to it, here we have a bunch of NHL pros with a bunch of booby prizes as fragile as gold-wrapped chocolate Hanukkah shekels.   

Meanwhile, looking forward to 2030, one of the leaders of the organizing committee for the 2030 Winter Olympics in France stepped down because he didn't play well with others. Among the committee members, their left hands don't know what their right hands were doing.  This should be interesting . . ..