Red Face-off and White Washing

American men are behaving badly at the Winter Olympics again.  Including Shaun White.

First, to get it out of the way, the U.S. men's ice hockey team.  Ahead 2-0 over Slovenia, the Americans suddenly collapsed and lost 3-2.  After the American women beat out the Olympic Athletes from Russia team in a shutout (5-0), the men shut down. Which prompted all of those silly Americans chanting "We're number one!" to shut up.  (At least one of the current White House residents, I'm sure, was secretly pleased.)  

As if seeing our guys live up to the tradition of American national men's teams choking weren't bad enough, we now learn that Shaun White is yet another celebrity involved in a sexual harassment case.  White has his own rock band, appropriately titled Bad Things, with a female drummer that has since left the band after White did . . . bad things.  To her.  It was since been reported that he texted her pictures of  private parts, and he has also been accused of having shown her hardcore porn, forcing her to drink vodka, trying to make her change her look to appear sexier, and making her smell something, uh, personal.  After his gold-medal victory in these PyeongChang Winter Games (the one hundredth gold-medal victory for the U.S. in the Winter Games' 94-year history), White, who settled with the woman out of court, admitted to the first charge but not the others, dismissing the rest as "gossip."  White sounds like a guy who's addicted to cocaine, crystal meth, and tobacco and only admits to smoking.

White has since apologized for his poor choice of words ("gossip?") and how he handled the story when it came to the fore; the case, for the record, was settled out of court.  He admits to being in a dark place at the time of his fourth-place halfpipe showing at the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014, leading to his bad behavior.  But the truth is that White has always been in a dark place of sorts.  No one in snowboarding likes him because of his swagger and self-importance. "To so many who saw the text messages, read the allegations," Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports wrote about White's magnificent comeback on the halfpipe course this week after his Sochi disappointment, "the notion of redemption was nothing more than a canard to distract from a far uglier story."

I'm not going to equate the U.S. men's ice hockey team's misdemeanor of sucking to White's high crimes.  But to see both stories at the same time has certainly caused a pang of rue for anyone who expected our guys at the Winter Olympics to be shining examples of American manhood in the Age of Trump.  Uh, fellas, could I see you in my office?     

On the Slopes

Shaun White proved why he is the Michael Phelps of snowboarding, having come back from a shaky second run in the men's halfpipe at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics to nail it in the third.  It was touch and go there, and the snow on the course proved to be as hard as ice - it was too much for some of the competitors - but White came through like the champion he is, winning his third career gold medal.

Meanwhile, in skiing . . . Will the women's slalom ever be held?  Will any of the skiing competitions that have already started even finish?  Bad weather on the course has prevented Mikaela Shiffrin, the young skier with the stellar ability and the spell-checker-unfriendly name, has just had her PyeongChang on the women's slalom debut delayed for the second time because of it.  I haven't seen Winter Olympic skiing be delayed by bad weather this much since Sarajevo in 1984.  At least NBC can shift to figure skating; back in 1984, ABC had to settle for commentary and music from John Denver to fill the time.

And Bosnian turnip carts.

Wow - a country-folk-pop singer who hadn't had a hit in three years . . . and adventures in pushcart vending on the streets of Sarajevo!  Oh, the drama! 

And people wonder why ABC lost coverage of the Olympics . . ..

Though it's been a long time since I've seen a Bosnian turnip cart.

With the weather in the mountains of South Korea being what it is, the Winter Olympic organizers might have to give up the ski competition for Lent.

There are in fact a lot of Catholics in South Korea . . ..

Kim and White

I'm not talking about an architectural firm.

Chloe Kim won the gold medal in the women's snowboarding halfpipe competition at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics with flying colors and by just flying.  I definitely noticed that her ability to surf the snow far exceeded the competition. She was swifter, higher and stronger, just like the Olympic credo.  It was a special moment for her, not just to win a gold medal at seventeen years of age, but to win it on the snow and soil of her parents' homeland. (That's right, another child of immigrants - are you listening, Tom Cotton?)      

Of course, on the men's side, there's still Shaun White. :-)

Most snowboarders perform the same, and it's hard to tell one from the other watching it on TV.  Not Shaun White.  You know it's him from how he files in the air. And after a disappointing run in Sochi in 2014, White distinguished himself in the qualifying runs, handling the course as if he were already going for the gold medal.  And he's 31.

Chloe Kim and Shaun White are not part of American snowboarding. They are American snowboarding.  They're pretty much global snowboarding too.  The other halfpipe competitors in both the men's and women's competition are just imitators.

Those halfpipe imitations put me on the blink. ;-)