Paul Hamm --- "Golden" Bastard"
I hesitate to elevate an Olympics medal dispute to the level of consternation of the current political crisis in this country. However, it is so indicative of the great problems of decadence in ethics and fairplay underlying that crisis, that I feel obligated to do just that.
Obligated because of the appalling "group think" of all American mass media, the IOC, and American Olympic officials in condoling this egregious injustice.For those who do not know the details, Olympic judges admitted making what amounts to math errors in computing the final score of the Korean gymnast in the all-round mens gymnastic finals routines, giving American Paul Hamm the gold medal (who had completed a remarkable "comeback" from an initial near-disastrous start). Now this mistake has been verified by the IOC but they refuse to right the injustice by upgrading the Korean's bronze medal to gold and lowering Hamm's to silver (still a remarkable and laudable accomplishment) because the Korean delegation supposedly did not discover and challenge the result "in-time".Now, in some instances where mistakes are made there is no reasonable fair recourse; for example if a hurdler crashes and takes another hurdler out of the race with her (happened to a Russian) ,although I recognize the injustice,I can see no fair recourse.If the race is rerun then all sorts of normal occurrences could happen that would not be fair to those who completed the original race (falls,injury,slower time ...etc).But in this case all routines by everyone were completed and the error occurred in the final routines.The fair medal shuffle is obvious,at least to me (and to thousands of Athens Olympics attendants who subsequently disrupted later events with boos and heckling of gymnastic judges and uninvolved other American competitors---something they do not deserve while themselves competing in the best spirit of fair competition; not alone I expect tens of millions of viewers around the world).
As far as the "too- late" complaint argument is concerned, that is "crap". If a drug test determines a medal winner is "dirty" the medal is forfeited even if months afterward.
But that is not the most revealing story here.How in good conscience could any athlete accept a medal they did not win. What value would it be. How could the American coaches, officials, media and yes we the public blindly accept the result .And I expect Hamm has been convinced somehow by those same people that he actually deserves the thing.Disgusting! I expect this illegitimate "hero" of American media and arrogance will get a hearty congratulations and "job well done" from our top illegitimate bastard Bush.
And, I expect that given the American whitewash of this "hero", most of the public will continue to not get an inkling of "why 'they' hate us so much".
My personal congratulations and apologies to Mr Yang Tae-young of Korea, the real overall mens gymnastics gold medalist of Athens 2004 Olympics.