Am I A Bad American?

I ask that question because I just cannot bring myself to care about the Olympics much. Sure, it's nice that Michael Phelps will win yet another huge pile of medals, probably even breaking a record for most gold medals in a single year. He'll be able to pave his entire driveway of his mansion with the medals he'll have won before he retires.

But I just......don't care. There are a lot of events I know next to nothing about, and maybe I'm boorish for saying so, but I don't really want to learn about them.

Two man synchronized skeet shooting? Nice. Whatever.

And any event that does not have a "set in stone"method of determining the winner is not a sport in my book. Swimming? First guy to the wall wins. Easy. That's a sport.

But anything that requires a bunch of judges I tend to look askew at. I'm sorry, I know this will offend some people, but that includes gymnastics. The people doing this are very athletic, and wonderfully skilled, but a good performance can be ruined on the whim of a cranky or biased judge. Again, this is not a knock on the gymnasts themselves. I couldn't do one single thing that they do, I would no doubt splatter myself all over the pommel horse and require it to be removed surgically from my face.

And I'm OK with that.

Maybe they could make it so the gymnasts had to shoot at targets while they did their routines. Yeah, now that would be interesting. "Kerry Strug did an amazing dismount, and blasted 4 out of 5 clay targets with her Remington 12 gauge pump-action shotgun! OUTSTANDING! That should win her the gold!"

But I have not watched a single moment of Olympics on TV, save for glancing at it when passing through the room while at a party at my in-laws.

And let's talk basketball for a moment. America sends multi-million dollar best-on-the-planet players. They are usually huge favorites to win. How can you root for that? OK, maybe a few countries are getting good besides us, but if the US team lost to a bunch of Maori tribesmen representing the New Zealand team, how could you not think that was the greatest freaking thing in Olympic history? I love a good underdog story.

And it's in China, a country whose government I can't say I care for. They still put Christians in jail. It wasn't that long ago they ran over college students with tanks. OK, no country is perfect (hello Abu Graib!), but as far as oppressive governments go ours still has quite a ways to go to match theirs.

And don't even get me started on women's beach volleyball. That's just an excuse for extraordinarily toned young women in very skimpy outfits a chance to leap around. It's become one of the most popular events at the Olympics, proving sex still sells.

Now excuse me, I need to get back to my beach volley.....er, work.