China? Olympics? Really?
Remember when President Carter ordered the US team to boycott the Russia Summer Olympics? It was over the USSR invasion of Afghanistan and didn’t do much to restore America’s (or Jimmy Carter’s) standing. It was a futile gesture, but at least Jimmy did something.
China is the villain hosting the Winter Olympics in 2022, and President Biden did not order a boycott. Turns out he (yet again) doesn’t have his finger on the pulse of the American people. He should have stuck a fork in Xi’s big show, because he might have gone up in the polls. And why is that?
Nobody’s watching. That’s right, because NBC is on track to have the lowest-rated Winter Olympics ever. That’s 8 million on Thursday, the lowest prime-time audience in history. Friday’s multi-channel broadcast grabbed 12.8 million viewers, quite a fall from the 27.8 million in 2018, when the games were in PyeongChang. Preliminary weekend numbers: 13.6 million Saturday and 13.7 million Sunday. So, what’s wrong?
Hard to say for sure, but the guess here is twofold.
It begins with China in the news: Americans have seen the steady march toward Chinese economic and military hegemony, including many reports of bioweapons gone bad and human rights abuses. Throw in the at-home kerfuffle over self-identified gender in sports – and the average American is either too scared to watch or too angry to care.
America’s politicians, take note. Everyday Americans don’t want to watch Hollywood diss Republicans on award shows. They want the USA to show its strength and humanity on the world stage. They are tired of the war on cultural constructs and societal norms. They watch the Olympics to have their faith in the American way restored – not witness a cowardly Speaker of the House (Pelosi) warn US athletes to avoid protesting China’s human-rights abuses.
Today’s political cartoon is from my pal Bob Gorrell. I think he nailed it (spread the word).
