Some Thoughts

The Vancouver Olympics are over and I enjoyed watching them very much. It is exciting to see athletes who have sacrificed and trained rigorously for years compete and do their best, whether that is good enough to win a medal or not. I was touched, as I'm sure you were, by the story of Joannie Rochette, whose mother died of a heart attack two days before Joannie was set to skate her short program for ladies figure skating. I admired Joannie's determination to skate in honor of her mother, who (along with Joannie's dad) was her daughter's biggest fan and supporter. I also marveled at her mental toughness to be able to skate and not fall to pieces, as I'm sure I would have. Her bronze medal was well deserved.

The thing that drove me nuts were the reporters. Talk about a bunch of ravening wolves! They circled around that poor girl, seemingly delighted to report her every tear in order to pull in viewers and up their ratings. It made me want to strangle people. My number one beef with the news is how the anchors seems to relish reporting the bad, sad, and tragic episodes of people's lives...and the more heart-wrenching the better. Their metallic voices rattle off stories of disaster and woe with more glee than pathos as they offer up the private sorrows of ordinary people to the network gods and ratings watchers. How refreshing then, was the commentary of Scott Hamilton during the ladies skating programs. As an Olympic champion himself, he knows the incredible drive to succeed, the stress and the nerves, the hours of practicing for one moment to shine. I've always enjoyed his positive comments and genuine desire for each skater to achieve and do their best...unlike Dick Button, who I grew up listening to every four years and learned to dislike for his critical and unkind comments regarding the skaters, especially the lesser known ones. Scott Hamilton has always seemed classy and sweet, but he outdid himself in Vancouver. When Joannie Rochette finished her beautiful and emotionally charged long program, I was in tears, and so was Scott Hamilton. He choked up on the air describing Joannie's courage and I wanted to cheer. Finally! A human being who is also an anaylst and commentator, someone who recognizes, as did John Donne, that "no man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee." I've always loved that quote because it reminds me that we are all interconnected, and that the success of one is the success of all just as the failure of one is the failure of all - we should rejoice for and with our brothers and sisters in the earth and mourn when they mourn. So hooray for Scott Hamilton, who rejoiced and sorrowed and marveled and supported another human being instead of waiting with bared fangs to bleed her dry in the name of network T.V.