Turn Down the Snarky Just a Little

Yeah, I know I'm the last person you would ever expect to hear this from, considering... well, every word I've blogged for almost a decade, but I think we could go without always having to see someone somewhere criticizing something. And yes I realize that I'm criticizing those who criticize (to use a fancy academic-type word, I'm "metacriticizing"), but you need to call people on this stuff, and I'm just the guy to do it. Who better to play the role of Snark Police than someone who knows what it is to be snarky? But I know where the line is, so I'm out to stop this trend toward snark overkill in cyberspace.

I can only use my experiences to illustrate my point, so we'll start with Yahoo... I use them for my e-mail so I'm on their site a good, oh, 10-12 times a day. I'm a little tired of logging on to Yahoo, seeing something interesting or amazing that happened, and then their need to post a link to one of their bloggers who wants to trash it. Case in point: the Winter Olympics. So far, their blog (which I won't identify by name because they don't deserve the publicity) has found a way to trash just about EVERYTHING that has happened. Their "top 10 moments of the Opening Ceremony"? The 10 things they hated the most. They managed to find a US snowboarder who had a problem with other snowboarders' PANTS! And it's not just overanalyzing (and overcriticizing) the Olympics. After every week of NFL playoff games this year, you had the big headline, followed by "Blogger: The Refs Hosed Us".

This also extends to their television blog, which I've taken issue with for some time. The blog has, among other things, trashed "Heroes" for daring to give their superhuman characters (*gasp*) feelings and emotions, trashed "Fringe" for not being a carbon-copy of "Lost" or "Alias", and... oh yeah, they trashed everything about the Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony as well. I guess I feel the need to ask Yahoo if this is what they consider "balance". Have the glowing news stories and then balance it with bloggers trashing everything. It's not really "balance" if you ask me, and frankly you don't need it. It's not like you're ever going to be taken seriously as a news outlet.

Whoops, now I'm trashing Yahoo... once again, I'm part of the problem. Oh well...

So let me tell you something positive about the Winter Olympics, so I can balance myself... I actually thought the Opening Ceremony was pretty good, despite the presence of Bryan Adams (and the fact that I couldn't get that damn "bang the drum" song out of my head for days afterward). Even with the number of times we had to hear about low budgets, I didn't really think of what I was watching in terms of dollar signs. It was a tremendous show, especially with the 3D floor effects. Okay, yeah they screwed up the cauldron lighting, but don't let that epic fail color your memories of a great few hours before that. And there's the events, of course... my favorite, naturally, is the hockey, but I haven't been able to watch it yet. Why? Because NBC won't air it in prime time. Then again, I shouldn't be surprised by this, after all it's the same network that has the friggin' contract for the NHL and punted half of the Stanley Cup Finals to the Versus network, despite record-high ratings. And I have yet to see the U.S. play. Oh don't get me wrong, it's kinda cool to watch the Czechs play Latvia, but I would think NBC would be all over the U.S. team, since that's what they do. And now I'm being snarky about NBC, so I'll move on to other sports...

Like speed skating. I always enjoy that, cuz if you've ever seen me skate then you know that I can barely stay upright, let alone skate quickly. Then there's the demolition derby known as short-track speedskating. It wasn't as exciting that Apolo Ohno won yet another medal in his event, so much as the fact that he got it because 2 of the 3 South Koreans ahead of him went flying off the track into the wall in the last turn as they jockeyed for podium position. And speaking of crashing, there's the skiing events. I especially like watching the moguls (although they make my knees sore just watching). But you really have to appreciate that every freestyle moguls skier has a backstory that goes something like: "she's broken her leg twice, had 6 knee surgeries, broke her jaw... but here she is skiing for the gold". That is DEDICATION.

And then there's curling... I mean what can you say about curling? Especially considering I have no freakin' clue how you're supposed to play this game, and yet I can't stop watching it! I spend some time with it every 4 years during the Winter Olympics, and each time I learn something new. This time around, I learned that there is a CLOCK in curling. Yeah, it's timed. And as such, there are time-outs. Why, I'm not sure.

And it wouldn't be the Winter Olympics if we didn't have the Russians raising hell about judging in figure skating. This time, it was on the men's side, where American Evan Lysacek downed Russian favorite Evgeni Plushenko, despite many seeing Plushenko's routine as more athletic and more daring. One Russian media outlet dismissed the hoo-ha, recalling Salt Lake City 8 years ago when they were "robbed" by judges who gave the women's gold to Sarah Hughes. "Nobody remembers Sarah Hughes," they said, "So it's no big deal." While it may be true that Sarah Hughes' name doesn't immediately come to mind when we think of all-time Olympic figure skaters, we DO remember you guys bitching every time you don't win a gold medal. Oops, I'm being too snarky about the Russians... ah screw it, they deserve it.

So it is possible to review the Winter Olympics without finding every little thing to criticize. I'll leave the bad-mouthing of the Canadian organizers for other people and take a page from our neighbors to the north and be a little nicer and a little less snarky... for this entry anyway. I'm not making any promises for the next one...