I sat on the floor of my living room yelling at the television “You can catch him! C’mon! Please catch him!” as Jason Lezak swam the final 10 meters of the Men’s 4x100 Relay. For just a few minutes, he carried the weight of every American’s pride on his shoulders. He delivered.
Seeing the wonderful words,“1. United States”, appear first on the screen was the most beautiful thing I have seen in a long time. Like good red-blooded Americans, my family and I went crazy.
First came the victory cry. Everyone has their own unique noise which they display for all to hear after a great victory has been won. As I fell back on the floor I threw my hands in the air and let out the loudest “Whaaaaaa!” I have since high school.
My dad jumped out of his chair as my mom stood on the other side of the room with her hand over her mouth. The bottom floor of my house was shaking with the noise of our celebration.
Next came the “I need to see that again!” moment. Like with every great moment in sports, we wanted to see it again, but this time in slow motion -- so as to study every movement of the athlete and try to determine at what moment the “break though” came that pushed him to world record heights.
Silently we sat there as the replay slowly played through. Almost as if it hadn’t already happened we watched Lezak’s hand closely as he reached out and touched “gold“. Smiles revisited all of our faces as we beat the French, and the world, for the “second” time. Sound familiar?
A few minutes later, as we were still discussing the race, an interesting commercial come on. A Visa commercial to be exact. The voice was Morgan Freeman’s and, in his own classic way, he said “There are six billion of us. We all come from unique places, with unique ways of looking at the world. We don’t always agree, but for a few shining weeks we set it all aside. We come together to stand and cheer and celebrate as one. We think all the things that make us different and remember all the things that make us the same.” Then the two words, “Go World” appeared on the screen.
That’s when a feeling of shame came over me. Shame for America’s mainstream media. Just when our country is enjoying the most exciting, patriotic moment in years, someone says “Go World”.
Leave it to the media, our media, to work it’s way around saying “Great job USA. We’re the best!”. That’s something our media would never do. I’ve sat amazed as I’ve listened to our own Olympic commentators say “We don’t cheer for the uniform, but the person wearing the uniform”. Such are the ways of those too afraid to have open opinions.
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