My Summer of Olympics Discontent

The Olympics—summer/winter whatever—have become an encomium to obsessive behavior, money worship, and bending the rules to win at all costs.

I hate it. Not that there are not Olympic athletes who are spectacularly excellent at what they do...there are.

But having watched none of it, while reading and listening to daily reviews of all of it--and how can one escape unless one runs off to hide in a cave?--I have come to the sorry conclusion that some of the finest athletes in the 2012  Summer Olympics may have intentionally lost initial less-interesting races in order to increase the hype for later races that were more interesting.

This realization came to me when I read that badminton teams were throwing their games for what the badminton teams claimed were good and moral reasons. If that could happen in badminton, it could happen in other games and races as well. And I am convinced this corruption did happen where highly promoted athletes were involved.

I hate the fact that pre-pubescent girls train all day for years doing a 12-second routine over and over and over. I also hate that when these girls start to show signs of puberty some are given drugs that put off the maturing process.

I hate the fact that the Olympics put obsessive behavior, cheating to win, money and adulation on a pedestal along with athletic prowess.

These games, which supposedly are a testament to the greatness of amateur athletes, have become as corrupt and dishonest as games played by professional sports teams.

No…let me rephrase that. The Olympics have become as corrupt and dishonest as games played by teams in colleges.