The Olympic Scandal
by Farrell Childe, licensed television critic
No, not that scandal. Not the supposed scandal about the figure skaters.
Gee, figure skating judges are unreliable. What a shock. Does anybody really think that you can devise reliable measures of something you can't even define, namely "artistic impression"?
And who cares if it was rigged? I don't recall there being a lot of betting action on the pairs. From the reaction in Canada and the United States, though, you'd think pairs figure skating was important or something.
George W. Bush is transforming international politics into a nuclear version of the WWF ("I, Captain America, will crush the Axis of Evil!") – we don't care.
National sovereignty is disappearing under the onslaught of the WTO – we don't care.
Five judges out of 9 say the Russian pair was artistically more impressive than the Canadian pair – then we care.1
No, the scandal I'm talking about is the real one. It is the scandalous television coverage of the Olympics provided by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
As a dutiful (and licensed) television critic I watched a considerable part of the opening ceremonies on the CBC. In fact, I watched all that I could before I ran screaming from the room so that I could bang my head against the wall for a half hour or so to make the evil get out.
The CBC coverage of the opening ceremonies featured Mr. Peter Mansbridge, the anchor of the CBC National News, admired by many at the CBC because he turned down a job in the States. A typical contribution from Mr. Mansbridge was his observation as the Greek team entered: "Greece will be busy preparing for the Athens Olympics in 2004." Gee, do you think, Peter? Personally, I was unaware that there was any doubt that Greece would be preparing for the 2004 Olympics. Maybe Mr. Mansbridge knows something we don't, but somehow I suspect not.
Mr. Mansbridge's partner was the incomparable Mr. Brian Williams. Not the Brian Williams of NBC News, but the Brian Williams of CBC Sports. The Brian Williams who can never remember what city he's in (while I was watching he claimed to be in Lillehammer on one occasion and in Lake Placid on another). The Brian Williams who thinks we can never get enough information about him (for example, he managed to slip in the fact that he's covered ten Olympic games). The Brian Williams who thinks it's cool to make the ethnically stereotypical observation that since Kenya produces good long distance runners then it should produce good cross-country skiers.
Hey, Brian – Kenya is on the freaking Equator! Cross-country skiing is not a big winter sport there, because they don't have any winter. Might it not be more to the point to let us know what sports the Kenyans are participating in, where they train, and so on, rather than to make repeated condescending references to the Jamaican bobsled team (whom Mr. Williams clearly thinks of as a bunch of buffoons)?
Mr. Williams also seems to be on a campaign to bring American pronunciation to the CBC. He has never pronounced Montreal the way English Canadians do, for example, and now he and some of his fellow announcers have started talking about Lotvia (sic) and Slovockia (quoque sic).
These pronunciations appear now to be acceptable in the United States. Perhaps that is a sign that Americans are more open to innovation; wouldn't be surprising. Nevertheless, in Canada these pronunciations still mark the user as a rube.
Of course, the CBC is the network of the rubes, isn't it? It produces all that wholesome family fare and all those earnest dramas in which the actors are directed to indicate frenetically so that the audience need never be in any doubt about how they are supposed to be interpreting what they are seeing. And on its big comedy show the performers smile on the punch lines so you'll know where the joke is.
But – there is hope! There was the occasional sign over the weekend that at least some of the staff assigned to the Olympics (or, as the CBC calls them, the Ohlympics), were trying to be analytical.
Analysis is what distinguishes good reporting from bad. Many CBC sports staff seem to think that good reporting consists of fawning over the athletes and making observations like "They'd really like to score now" and "To win this game they've got to put some points on the board." However, a few valiantly fight the good fight.
In the past I have been unimpressed by Mr. Ronald McLean, but he seems to have matured into a very good sports commentator, analytical and critical. He wasn't cracking bad jokes every thirty seconds, either, as he used to. Mr. Donald Cherry not only predicted Germany's upset of Slovakia in men's hockey, he also pronounced Slovakia correctly. Finally, I was pleasantly astonished by Mr. Victor Rauter, someone whose work I have not previously been given much cause to admire (he once opened a curling telecast by wishing us a happy Good Friday), who delivered a highly professional pre-race analysis of the downhill course. Of course, Mr. Rauter usually works for TSN.
So maybe the pendulum has started to swing back. Perhaps the reign of the non-analytical sports commentator (Mr. Williams, for example, who never essays an opinion, when announcing a baseball game, about what the last pitch was) is coming to a close at the CBC, and the professional sports commentators are going to take over.
If they do, there is no reason to feel sorry for Mr. Williams et al. There are still plenty of places ready to hire commentators like him. For example, he could go the States and announce NFL games.
1. Hommage: This rhetorical device is used in humble tribute to the man who popularized it, the great Mr. John Carson.] Back to the articleThe Olympic Scandal © Coolth, 2002
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