American Pride and Sportsmanship

As a spectator I can only imagine what it is like to be at the Olympics, and after all the training and hard work, to secure a momentous victory in the form of a gold medal. I find it an interesting comment that the American athletes were told to keep their "celebrating" directly after a win to a minimum so as not to create or aggravate anti-American sentiment. While I find that somewhat overzealously cautious, I do think it smacks of some truth. There is a difference between celebration and puffery ; between pride and ethnocentrism. Now, from what I have seen, the American athletes have been extremely well-behaved and honorable. I am, however, having a SEVERE problem with the commentators who seem to have no problem making snide remarks about non-American players and their cultures, including a smarmy comment by Bob Costas during the opening ceremonies about the Singapore government being unable and "forgetting" to pay the native athlete with the most medals $1m and the table tennis commentator deriding the money donated by a Chilean mining company to Papic for training purposes (while it may not be a lot in US$, it is a lot to the native Chilean). All this, and more, smacks of such ethnocentrism and poor sportsmanship from people who should be commenting on the sport and the athletes and not making derisive comments about non-American players and their countries. Perhaps they are the ones to be reigned in and not the athletes for whom all the hard work is thrust upon. To end American anti-sentiment is to temper or eliminate the one thing that causes it...American pride, which is sometimes erroneously placed and cultivated in an atmosphere of machismo muscle-flexing so typical in any dealings from political to sports.