A patriot questioning patriotism

On my way to work this morning, I landed on a radio station (and now I can't even remember which one) in the middle of an absolute rant from the two morning hosts. They were tearing apart a column written by Gil LeBreton of the Star Telegram in Fort Worth, Texas. And they were having themselves full-on, angry, meltdown conniptions over it.

The column basically criticizes Canada's pride, self-promotion, and patriotism in the media during the course of the Olympics in Vancouver; most insensitively, LeBreton draws comparison after comparison to the 1936 Games in Berlin, casting Canadians as the Nazis. These thoughts alone render him tactless and remarkably short-sighted in my mind, but he lost additional points by complaining about how self-focused Canadian publications, tv networks, and Canadians themselves were.

Now, I can't truly take up this argument with him because he was in Vancouver in person and I wasn't, so his observations are his own and I can't dispute that. But I did watch Olympic coverage on CTV, as well as NBC, and I can't come up with a better way to say it: is this ever the pot calling the kettle black. Did anyone watch NBC's coverage in Beijing, which in essence was the Michael Phelps Fan Hour(after hour after hour)? What, there were other events not taking place in a pool? I had no idea!

From my perspective, American primetime coverage basically sticks to three or four shining heroes, a fraction of the events, and only occasional, brief features on athletes from anywhere else. (I haven't read a newspaper regularly in a long time, unfortunately, so I can't speak to that.) LeBreton laments, "But for the most part, the most underappreciated soul at these Olympics was an American or a European on the medals stand."

Wow. I don't know whether to laugh or yell at my computer screen. Americans are never underappreciated, because we make sure of it ourselves, which sometimes ironically dead ends into less-than-enthusiastic international opinion. You should have heard these guys on the radio. Not exactly thrilled, and directed at America as a whole, not just this one man. And it's not just them; the Star Telegram has received comments and letters to the editor aplenty in response to this column.

I guess it boils down to this: Americans are not the only people entitled to national pride. Our patriotism is a beautiful and binding connection for our country, and especially a country as diverse as ours. And if people like LeBreton recoil when other nations display a similar confidence and enthusiasm, that's unfortunate. I can understand Canada's efforts to rouse some visible (and audible) patriotism surrounding the Olympics on their home soil, especially with its loud, swaggering North American brother watching. Why does LeBreton fault them for that, while ignoring very similar attitudes within the borders of his own country? I'm baffled.