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Comment by dominotw | Hacker News Reader

>Not enough drama for you? How about the fact that gymnasts risk their health every time they step onto the mat?

>One of the factors preventing Americans from appreciating just how difficult it is to do what an Olympic gymnast does is the fact that competitors are expected to perform their routines without betraying any evidence of effort.

I've stopped reading twitter/news due to this constant moral chiding. I don't understand this (recent?) obsession with pointing out how Americans are stupid/ignorant/racists/misogynists/shallow. Wish we could keep this kind of stuff out of HN.

Only egomaniacs overestimate their own virtuousness and underestimate everyone else's.

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I blame the Huffpo. These narratives are their bread and butter and that site is incredibly popular with liberals. Its odd that liberals went from their 60s era 'freedom from authority' ideals to becoming authorities themselves and engaging in exactly what authorities back then were doing: being overly moralistic, shaming sexuality - especially for boys, creating narratives of 'the other,' being dishonest to win political points, shaming/chiding for social control, etc.

The Huffpo is about as far as you can get from the Summer of Love as humanely possible. Regressive liberalism is a real thing and barely recognized. It seems liberals have very much bought into shaming and apparently it gets results (ad revenue, facebook likes, etc).

>Not enough drama for you? How about the fact that gymnasts risk their health every time they step onto the mat?

So do most athletes, honestly - especially those at the Olympics. Weight lifters hauling up double their weight above their head? Swimmers who have muscles strong enough to dislocate their own joints? Pole vaulters hefting themselves two stories in the air? Cyclists going 40+mph down roads with minimal protective gear?

The capabilities of even the worst olympic contenders boggles my mind. They should all get air time.

What you quoted is a criticism of American sports-media, not Americans.

If you subscribe to the theory that the media is in a deliberate conspiracy against the public, that might hold.

If you believe (as I do) that the media is mostly in the business of giving people what they want (not what they say they want, but what they actually choose to reward with ad impressions) then they are exactly the same.

That's not how mass media works. 10,010,000 mildly interested people beats 10,000,000 highly interested people. If you care about the sport you're going to watch even if the coverage I crap, thus people who care are ignorable if they can get an extra 0.01% of viewers or just save some money.

So yes there are dumb people in the US and NBC wants them to tune in. But, that says little about the rest of the US population.

No conspiracy is required. I just think they're doing the easier thing that follows narratives from non-sports programming, instead of doing the harder thing and getting experts who are good at explaining a sport to non-experts.

This.

It's becoming rather annoying how "holier than thou" the modern American has become. What's so distressing, is that these authors/people, never recognize their own shortcomings, but are so adept at pointing out others.

> How about the fact that gymnasts risk their health every time they step onto the mat?

Obligatory

http://xkcd.com/1701/

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