Their overheated, U.S.-obsessed reaction to Monday night's uneven-bars final made America look like a banana republic.
Reuters / Hans Deryk
He Kexin of China (left) and Nastia Liukin of the U.S. compete in the women’s uneven bars final during the artistic gymnastics competition at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games August 18, 2008.
Can someone tell NBC to tone down its burning need to celebrate all things bright and U.S.-iful? I’ve put up with its homerism until now, but I’ve had it. The way it waves the flag makes me feel like I’m a citizen of a banana republic, in which everything about the Motherland is Great and Glorious except the plumbing. To paraphrase Humphrey Bogart’s immortal line in “The Maltese Falcon,” “The cheaper the country, the gaudier the patriotic patter.”
The straw that broke the hump of my patriotic dromedary was NBC’s coverage of Monday night’s gymnastics showdown between Nastia Liukin and He Kexin on the uneven bars. I’m not an expert in gymnastics, but I’ve watched enough to know when two routines are extremely close. And that was emphatically the case with He and Liukin. He, who stands 4 feet 8 inches and weighs about as much as an extra-large sack of potatoes, was faster, quicker and tighter in her execution than Liukin. Liukin, 5-foot-3 with long legs, was more flowing and had longer, prettier lines. He had amazing releases; Liukin performed gorgeous pirouettes. It was like the difference between playing a note staccato and playing it legato — strictly a matter of taste. Liukin stuck her landing but didn’t have the greatest form on the way down. He took a side step on her dismount. Both made a couple of other minor mistakes. In a word, close.
The first time I watched the two routines, I thought He was better. The second time, I thought Liukin might be better. The third time, I threw up my hands. The point is, it certainly wasn’t obvious. This isn’t just my dumb opinion, either — our resident gymnastics expert, Jennifer Sey, agreed. It was a squeaker, and it’s a subjectively judged event. Which means, if you’re a commentator, accept the decision graciously and shut up.
To listen to the overheated, reflexively pro-American NBC team, though, you’d think we were watching that scene in “Casablanca” when a croupier hands Captain Renault a wad of cash with the words “Your winnings, sir.” No sooner had Liukin received her score — the same 16.725 that He was awarded — than NBC’s expert commentator Tim Daggett said, “I think they dropped the ball on this one.” Working himself up, he later called the decision “crazy.” NBC’s other expert commentator, Elfi Schlegel, jumped on the “we wuz robbed” bandwagon, saying, “Absolutely, Tim. That routine was spectacular. One slight flaw but minuscule compared to what He did.”
And the agonizing and wringing of hands got worse after He was awarded the gold because of an arcane — and absurd — tie-breaking rule. As the camera zoomed in on Liukin, long after she had figured out the tiebreaker had been applied, bombastic play-by-play man Al Trautwig emoted, thumb-on-scales empathy oozing from every phoneme, “Nastia just wants to know what the heck is going on.”
After the final competitor performed, He immediately knew she had won. There was no controversy — the tiebreaker had already been applied. So, as winners usually do at this time, she got up, beaming, and waved to the crowd. But NBC reacted as if there were still some possible other outcome that might reverse this cosmic travesty. “She already believes she’s going to win,” Trautwig said. “Yeah, they think it’s over,” someone else chimed in. Uh, perhaps they thought that because it was over.
But for NBC, it wasn’t over. First, it brought in a reporter to deliver a gratuitous report on why the U.S. was not protesting the result. (Answer: It had no grounds!) Then it got so deep into its outrage-and-confusion theme that it missed the beginning of the medal ceremony. As the medal music began to play, instead of showing the three athletes on the podium, NBC showed Liukin’s coach and father, Valeri Liukin, and team coach Martha Karolyi staring at a paper explaining the tiebreaker. NBC barely caught the introduction of Chinese bronze medalist Yang Yilin. It bordered on the disrespectful. And as the camera focused on Liukin during the medal ceremony, Trautwig launched into yet another profound psychological soliloquy, intoning that “at times like this you just have to remind yourself, I’ve won four Olympics gold medals here and I won the most cherished gold medal there is in this sport.” Then he added portentously, “But boy, would things be different here if that hadn’t happened.”
The nadir of this overwrought episode came when Trautwig said, “Does He Kexin really think she won the gold?” At least Daggett had the good sense to say that she did. But the impression left was that Fort Knox had just been burgled by Goldfinger and James Bond was too busy with Pussy Galore to do anything about it.
Gymnastics judging controversies are as common as group hugs on every point in volleyball. There are enough real travesties in this sport that the commentators don’t need to go out of their way to create them. I accept that the NBC experts sincerely believed Liukin was better. (Trautwig doesn’t pretend to know what he’s talking about, so his comments fall into a different category, the kind you use to inflate dirigibles.) I also accept that they’re paid to express their opinions. But in a sport that’s judged like this one, when there’s a close outcome, sometimes you just have to accept it. Daggett claimed that the fact that Liukin was American didn’t affect his views, and maybe that’s true. But the U.S.-centric tilt of the whole telecast was unmistakable — and the problem goes beyond gymnastics. If NBC could take the red, white and blue filter off everything, we could see the Olympics a lot more clearly.
20. Brian Williams
The NBC anchor is an annoying throwback to the outdated newsreaders of yesteryear
(Credit: Wikipedia/David Shankbone)
I’m sorry, but I’m just sick of him. I’m sick of his much-remarked-upon sense of humor, notable only because a news anchor capable of verbal communication that doesn’t involve a teleprompter is treated like a dog who knows a particularly clever trick. I’m sick of his constant invocation of his blue-collar Jersey roots, I’m sick of his stories about listening to Springsteen with his old friends Lou the mechanic and Sal the bricklayer. I’m sick of his perfect imitation of the ridiculous old flat-accented voice-of-god news anchors.
NBC gave him a talk show with the deeply stupid name “Rock Center” (no one in the known history of New York has referred to Rockefeller Center as “Rock Center,” I’m sorry that “30 Rock” took the name you wanted but you have to come up with something different), where he is not quite as funny as a late night talk show host and not quite as newsy as a news show host. And, obviously, not as opinionated as a cable news show host, because as a network evening news anchor, Mr. Williams is not allowed to think for himself, or hold opinions on issues other than the annoyingness of those Brooklyn Hipsters.
But it’s the never-ending, nonstop, beat-you-over-the-head blue-collar Jersey Shore shtick that grates the most. It’s desperate and unconvincing, coming from a multimillionaire television personality. We get it! You used to be “authentically” American, according to some arbitrary signifiers! (And if you’re so damn proud, why did you lose your accent?)
HACKIEST 2011 MOMENT:
A January appearance on “The Late Show With David Letterman,” in which Letterman, who in recent years has often displayed an environmentalist streak, asked Williams if recent freak weather events could be traced to anthropogenic climate change. Williams, mugging but clearly uncomfortable, declined to even acknowledge the existence of climate change itself. He refused to “take sides,” and joked, “What have I done to deserve this?” A perfect encapsulation of the uselessness of the “objective” (and idiotic) network nightly news anchor, too cowardly or dumb to “take sides” on a “debate” between craven political actors and the nearly universal scientific consensus. (But why would we expect a regular guy’s guy from Jersey to understand all that complicated climate science? He’s too busy cruising the shore in his souped-up Bel Air Hardtop with Mary and Puerto Rican Johnny to examine the evidence!)
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(Read the introduction here. Read the 2010 Salon Hack 30 List here.)
Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon. Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene
Stop the remakes!
NBC's new "Munsters" reboot spells the end of civilization -- or at least the death of all original ideas
The Munsters (Credit: IMDB)
Should you have ever believed that there couldn’t possibly be any more entertainment barrel yet to be scraped, remember this: NBC has just approved a pilot for a remake of “The Munsters.” Yes, the sitcom about a wacky monster family, a show that has been off the air since 1966, is returning at last. Naturally, this new version will “have a darker and less campy feel” than the Vietnam War-era original. Well, that makes it sound awesome. And NBC is the network that put “Community” on ice while giving “Whitney” a pickup — so I, the viewer, trust its taste implicitly!
It might be a hopeful sign that the show will be overseen by Bryan Fuller, who created the imaginative, not completely awful “Pushing Daisies.” Less hopeful: Fuller is also developing a show based on “Silence of the Lambs.” This undoubtedly essential “Munsters” update comes in the midst of an unprecedented glut of reboots and reimaginings, all thick with the promise that No, really, this will be very different. It will creepy and full of action and with a feminist theme. You know what’s really different? A stinkin’ original idea.
We have already endured the small-screen update of “Charlie’s Angels” and the cinematic revival of “Footloose” – both of which, by the way, died on the vine. Broadway is now almost exclusively revivals, “jukebox musicals,” and stuff based on old Whoopi Goldberg movies. We will soon be treated to both a new “21 Jump Street” and “Dark Shadows.”
Other classics also up for a fresh look: “Godzilla,” which you may recall, fared so well last time someone attempted it. “The Crow.” “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.” “Woody Woodpecker.” Leonardo DiCaprio is currently considering a “Six Million Dollar Man” remake. Oh, and “rehearsal is for fags” impresario Brett Ratner may be redoing “The Last American Virgin.” I know I don’t catch everything going on with the young folk, but has there been a great national longing that translates into “Give the people another ‘Last American Virgin’!”? Have you seen the original? It’s no “Porky’s.” Quite frankly, it’s not even “Zapped!”
Tired old ideas aren’t just spawning like Duggars, they’re being cloned. There are currently two “dark and less campy” television dramas based on old fairy tales — “Grimm” and “Once Upon a Time.” There are two competing Snow White movies coming out in 2012, “Snow White and The Huntsman” and “Mirror Mirror.” Both, of course, feature a totally kickass Snow White who doesn’t waste her time trilling to little birds. She’s busting heads! Even “The Munsters” will find itself vying for NBC’s attention against another pilot the network has approved: “Frankenstein.” (Not to be confused with the movie of “I, Frankenstein,” also currently in the works.) There are 300 million people in America. And four ideas.
Humans have always had a natural inclination toward returning to the same stories. It’s why the plays of Aristophanes continue to be performed, why vampire tales still ignite the imagination, why “Doctor Who” never goes out of style. I’m not convinced, however, that’s why remakes of “Get Smart” and “The A-Team” happen. Every time a television show or movie gets underway, millions of dollars and hundreds of careers are on the line. It’s understandable that a seemingly sure thing would have more allure than something riskier. (Again I say, “Community.”) And sure, Hollywood has had a self-sucking parasite for eons. That element of terribleness existed even before Ernest made that “Beverly Hillbillies” movie all those years ago.
But all you have to do is sit through the trailers at the next movie you attend, or read what the network midseason replacements include, and you’ll feel a little bit of contact death of the soul, a plague emanating from somewhere deep in the bowels of L.A. But I can’t be alone in saying that I don’t want to watch a movie because I saw it 20 years ago. And I sure as hell don’t want to watch it because it was a crap TV series 20 years ago – no matter how edgy anyone promises that reboot of “Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper” will be.
Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams
Greenspan: US “Can pay any debt it has”
"We can always print money," says former Fed chair indicating that S&P downgrade is about something else
Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan
Former Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, reiterated a point Sunday that many economists have made during this debt crisis: It’s not just about creditworthiness.
“The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So, there is zero probability of default,” said Greenspan on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
He said that the S&P downgrading of U.S. debt — more than indicating a genuine risk of default — “hit a nerve that there’s something bad going on.” He said the move “hit the self-esteem of the United States, the psyche… . It’s having a much profounder effect than I conceived could happen.”
Greenspan said too that the downgrade would likely precipitate market turmoil, but that the possibility of a double-dip recession depended on Europe..
Appearing alongside Greenspan, Austan Goolsbee, the chairman of the White House’s council of economic advisors, hit out at S&P. “Well, the basic case is they made a $2 trillion math error and forgot to check their work,” he said. “So rating agencies that didn’t make a $2 trillion math error reaffirmed the AAA status.”
Watch the clip below:
Poll: Public sides with Obama on deficit
The potentially catastrophic effects of a default are finally sinking in with Americans
In this July 14, 2011, file photo, President Barack Obama sits with House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, as he meets with Republican and Democratic leaders regarding the debt ceiling in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, Thursday, July 14, 2011. Obama's decision to haul lawmakers in day by day to negotiate a debt deal comes down to reality: He has no other choice. The president has essentially cleared his agenda to deal with one enormous crisis. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak) (Credit: AP)
Most Americans want to see a compromise on the debt ceiling, according to a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll.
62 percent of self-identified Democrats said they would want Democratic leaders in the House and Senate to make compromises to gain consensus on the current budget debate, while only 43 percent of Republicans want to see their party leaders concede some of their positions. However, around 70 percent of independent respondents said they wanted to see both parties compromise.
The poll results, released Tuesday show that 55 percent of respondents think that failing to raise the debt ceiling would be “a real and serious problem,” while only 18 percent said it would not be. This contrasts starkly to results gleaned from a Gallup survey in May, in which 47 percent of people said they would want Congress to vote against raising the debt ceiling.
Meanwhile, support for President Obama’s proposal for lowering the deficit significantly trumps that for Republican proposals: 58 percent of NBC/WSJ poll respondents said they preferred Obama’s suggestions to lower the federal deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years by cutting federal spending, raising tax revenue from the wealthy and reducing some Medicare spending. Contrastingly, only just over a third prefer the House Republican proposal to reduce the deficit by $2.5 trillion over 10 years through cutting spending alone and not raising additional revenues.
“Friday Night Lights” life lessons: You are going to fail
What NBC's football drama can teach you about swallowing your pride and losing with dignity
FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS -- Episode 103 -- Pictured: Kyle Chandler as Coach Eric Taylor -- NBC Photo: Dean Hendler (Credit: Dean Hendler)
While not the biggest fan of sports culture, I was hooked on the show “Friday Night Lights” from its premiere episode. The soaring music that crescendoed when a ball was mid-air was somehow just as mesmerizing as watching Taylor Kitsch take off his shirt.
Now that the show is in its final season on NBC (though technically the finale played back in February on DIRECTV), there’s no denying that the tragically under-awarded series has been held together by some amazing performances. In particular, Kyle Chandler as the stoic Coach Eric Taylor has imparted five years of wisdom, not all of it about football. What has Coach T. really taught us? He taught us all how to fail, and how to fail well.
Here are some “Friday Night Light” tips for when you lose at life.
1. Get rid of that pride, boy
In the “devil town” of Dillon, everyone must eventually answer for their sins. Whether its conning your church out of money to buy steroids, making an off-handed racist remark to the press, or screwing your crippled best friend’s girlfriend — and hey, we’re still in season one! – there is no moral or ethical slip that goes unpunished on “Friday Night Lights.”
And while that could turn another type of show into a real downer, Coach T. is always there to pick you up when you fall … as long as your hubris doesn’t stand in the way. When QB Matt Saracen skips practice to get drunk at the local strip club in season two, and misses his grandmother’s trip to the hospital (yikes), it’s hard to imagine anyone getting back on their feet from that kind of screw up. But as Coach knows, there’s nothing like an ice-water bath and some primal crying to start the healing process.
On the other end of the spectrum, you have the McCoy family: with son J.D. too proud (or scared) to break away from his over-achieving, physically abusive father and side with the protective coach, he ends up taking on more and more of his old man’s nasty qualities. Both Matt and J.D. make bad decisions because of their daddy issues, but only Matt is strong enough to ask for help. Guess who ends up better off in the end?
2. If you’re going to lose, lose honorably
The Panthers lost the state championships at the end of Season 3, and it cost Coach T. his job at the school. That’s the part of life where most people would give up and crawl under the covers with a bottle of Xanax. But Eric Taylor knows he made the right call by benching J.D. and putting Matt in, even if that meant losing the game and hurting his career.
This theme is repeated off the field as well: Tim Riggins going to jail for his brother when the police raid their chop-shop; Lyla Garrity continuing her cheerleading after her affair with Tim makes her a social pariah; Jason giving up his dreams in order to raise the child he accidentally fathered. After all, losing is half the game, and as Tami Taylor puts it, “Either way, the sun is going to come up the next morning.” Sure, it’s a rehashed line from “Annie,” and the point is even more cliché, but it still holds water … win or lose, in life it’s all about how you play the game.
3. Surround yourself with your people
Even Coach Taylor isn’t infallible, and when he does screw up, he has the support of his team, his family, and even Buddy Garrity to rely on. No one on “Friday Night Lights” can do it alone, and woe to the person who tries to remain tough and aloof when trouble comes knocking. Everyone on the show has to learn this lesson – some people like Tim Riggins have to learn it over and over – but the nice thing about football metaphors is that they work even when you’ve heard them a thousand times before. There is just no “I” in Taylor’s team.
Unfortunately, that does means the show occasionally takes a small-town mentality when it comes to characters trying to leave Dillon to move on with a life past high school football. This is usually shown as a bad decision, like when Coach goes to teach college ball at the end of season one, or when Riggins goes to college. Whatever happens to Jason Street or Smash or Lyla after they head out into the big scary world is their own affair … by leaving the Dillon nest, they are removed from the sacred circle privy to Coach’s pep-talks. We can only imagine that they’re all gutter junkies now, turning tricks and wishing that they’d stayed in Texas.
4. Failure is a state of mind
Living in Dillon isn’t easy. This is doubly so if you live in East Dillon, which is so completely different from (West?) Dillon that it’s basically “The Wire’s” portrayal of Baltimore dropped down in the south. East Dillon is so messed up that no one on the show really even talks about its existence until a Katrina-like natural disaster somehow decimates the poor, black side of town (but not the affluent suburban area). Or when Coach T. is exiled to run the East Dillon Lions as punishment for not throwing himself at the mercy of Mr. McCoy. But looking around the decimated playing field of East Dillon High, Mr. and Mrs. Taylor make their first move together: picking up the garbage strewn on the grass, one piece at a time.
By the end of the fifth season, the Lions are the new Panthers, thanks to tough love from a coach who won’t let his team be defined by their poor track record, bad attitudes, or shady after-school activities. If you want to act like a coward, you best get the hell off the field and out of the coach’s house.
5. …except when it isn’t
On “Friday Night Lights,” almost every episode includes a character learning something about themselves and becoming better for it: a better friend, a better son or daughter, a better teammate. But for all the emotional manipulation that the show cleverly steeps itself in, it grounds itself with the memory of its very first episode, when star quarterback Jason Street is paralyzed from an injury during a game. Sometimes life is suffering, princess, and there is no way you can “better yourself” out of the pain.
Coach T.’s voice leading the team in prayer at the end of the pilot episode sums this up better than I ever could:
“Give all of us gathered here tonight the strength to remember that life is so very fragile. We are all vulnerable. And we will all, at some point in our lives, fall. We will all fall. We must carry this in our hearts: that what we have is special, and that it can be taken from us. And when it is taken from us, we will be tested. We will be tested to our very souls.
We will now all be tested. It is at these times, it is this pain, that allows us to look inside ourselves.”
In other words: just because you can’t fix it, doesn’t mean you can’t grow from it. Clear eyes, full hearts … yes, even if you lose.
Page 1 of 27 in NBC
A Rare Migration ; Snowy Owls 
Run, Stephen, Run 
Wulff in sheep's clothing: Germany's presidential crisis 
A match made on Craigslist adult services 
Can’t see the forest for the wood 
The things I carry 
When I lost the ability to type 
Pop art, the beaded edition 
The beautiful banality of high school 
The unemployed meet MacArthur’s tanks 
Demi’s last night out 
One day you’re in 
Pitch and catch 
