On Giving the Lone Eagles Salute to White House Honors

It has been a long standing tradition that winners of national sports championships are invited to the White House to be feted.

The Philadelphia Eagles won their first Super Bowl championship in 52 years in the NFL by beating the New England Patriots.  The underdog Eagles were slated to visit the White House but the event was cancelled when only nine of seventy team personnel were confirmed to visit the South Lawn ceremony, again dragging politics unto the sports field.

While it is true that no Philadelphia Eagles players Took the Knee during the Francis Scott Key Star Spangled Banner, some players raised their fists, akin to the Black Power salute during the 1968 Summer Olympics.  But by skipping the White House honors was intended as a progressive protest against the winner of the 2016 Presidential election, President Donald J. Trump.

Lest one excuse their absences from the White House ceremonies as not just flipping the bird at President Trump, consider the invitation by the Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia) to visit Philadelphia City Hall for alternative honors.



President Trump reacted to the Philadelphia Eagles recalcitrance to attend the White House ceremonies, so he disinvited the NFL championship ceremony and in its stead opted for a patriotic pep rally.

The NFL recently changing their rules to require players on the field to stand for the National Anthem (but allowing them to stay in their locker rooms) to mitigate the mire that has been festering since Colin Kaepernick started protests during the National Anthem in 2016. Ratings for the NFL have significantly dipped since the National Anthem protests.  Moreover, President Trump has often weighed in to support respecting civic rituals which honor our nation as embodied in the National Anthem.

Clearly the NFL owners made a business decision, but it mirrors the wishes of many erstwhile pro football fans to have an avocation away from polemic politics. Alas, the progressive instinct is to politicize everything.  There are rumors that some NFL players are saying that they will sit out the 2018 season until Colin Kaepernick is signed as a quarterback and is not penalized for taking his knee during the National Anthem. It is a pity that the Philadelphia Eagles organization used South Lawn ceremony as another extension of partisan warfare by trying to give President Trump the Lone Eagle salute.  But this allowed the populist President to counter-punch and reinforce values which appeal to many coalitions of new Republican voters as part of the Great Revolt.

NBC Shame Faced for Parade of Ignorance Displayed During Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony

The 23rd Winter Olympiad in Pyeongchang, South Korea had a reoccurring theme of Peace, as was evident from the Opening Ceremonies.  It was well known that athletes from North and South Korea would march as a unified team into Pyeongchang Olympic Stadium.  

One of the draws for casual sports fans to watch the Olympics is the Opening Ceremonies. The pageantry of the Opening Ceremonies, as expressed through artistic expression as well as thematic choice sets the mood for the Olympic Games.  Afterwards, there is the Parade of Nations, when all of the competitors gather in a gesture of unity and good will.  During this long march of nations, television viewers often have to endure commentary from NBC announcers to add color and context to the visuals.  Often this dialogue is pap or seems scripted.

However, when the Japanese team made their debut at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, NBC Asia correspondent Joshua Cooper Ramos offered an incredible generalization.  Ramos claimed that Koreans looked with admiration to Japan as an important example of cultural, economic and technological transformation.




Several hours after uttering this insensitive and insulting insinuation, NBC Sports issued a hasty apology.

NBC paid $967 million for broadcast rights for the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, and it would seem that they did not want to insult their hosts.

With that in mind, one wonders why NBC keeps pushing North Korean propaganda while covering the Winter Olympics.  No doubt that a unified Korean team marching during the Parade of Nations was a big story.  It epitomizes the international aspiration of brotherhood and exemplifies the Pyeongchang Game's theme of Peace.  

[Front Center] Vice President Mike Pence [Back Center] Kim Yo Jung, sister of DPRK dictator Kim Jun Un

It is understandable that an Olympic broadcaster would want to capitalize on controversy by showing how close Vice President Mike Pence was seated to North Korean Kim Jong Un's sister Kim Yo Jong during the Opening Ceremonies.




The coverage of the North Korea cheerleaders during the womens' hockey game between Korea and Switzerland does raise eyebrows.  It was a cute featurette to have a piece about the some of the 200 woman squad of  the North Korean "Army of Beauty" cheerleaders leading chants during the 0-8 rout of Korea.  Some say that the synchronized chants of the North Korea Beauty Cheerleaders stole the show. But what what telling is what they chanted and how they performed.  These NPDK cheerleaders chanted "Unity" waving "neutral" flags of a unified Korea. After each goal by their opponent, they chanted: "Cheer up!".  Perhaps that exemplifies a cultural trait.  


What has been shown but little explored are instances in which the female Beauty Squad use big heads of a Korean man.  Hmm.  Who could this be?  


It is dubious that it was an everyman Korean.  The Big Head looks rather like an idealized image of North Korea dictator Kim Jong Un. What does it say about the consequences of  "Unity".  Is that something that all Koreans also believe?

UPDATE 02/12/2018  BBC News quotes Korean media that the DPRK Army of Beauties cheerleaders were holding up big heads of Kim Il-sung, the grandfather of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un (the first of the Hermit Kingdom's Juche post World War II dictators).  Yet the South Korean Unification Ministry insists that the cheerleaders were just holding up cut outs of "a good looking man". 

Being At Peace With Different Measures of Glory

Athletes from Unified North & South Korean Team at Winter Olympics

The 23rd Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea are themed to be the games of peace.  This was accentuated by athletes of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) marching with their Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (North Korea) counterparts under a unified flag.

Olympic Athletes from Russia for 2018 Winter Olympics 

Due the doping ban on Russian Federation, the 169 clean Russian athletes marched as neutrals in red and grey uniforms as neutrals.  Any gold medal winning "Olympic Athletes of Russia"  will be feted with the raising of the Olympic flag and anthem. 

While the  2,952 athletes participating in the Pyeongchang games are the best winter sport athletes in the world, but only a few make it up to the medal stand to receive their glory. For most, marching in the Winter Olympics opening ceremony is the highlight of their careers. 



This makes Eric Liddell's admonition about glory all the more poignant. 




What is particularly noteworthy of Eric Liddell is not that he was the the Flying Scotsman was the first  British Gold Medal winner in track from 1924, or that he was the basis of the film Chariots of Fire (1981), or his steadfast Sabbath keeping, but for dying as a missionary in a Japanese internment camp in China in 1945. 

We should all be inspired to run a good race in life and doing our best.

On Russia Being Banned from 2018 Winter Olympics

Lula da Silva on the Rio Olympics

Considering the cost overruns and concerns about terrorism, President Barack Obama's  most felicitous "accomplishment" may have been the elimination of Chicago for the 2016 Summer Olympics, despite a full court lobbying press by the President 

Political Uneven Bars

Shouldn't it be the High Jump rather than uneven bars?

Jesse Owens on Winning

Go big or go home?

Olympic Gold Medalist Gabby Douglas Profoundly Praises God

 

Gabrielle Douglas won both the individual and the team Gold Medals for women's gymnastics at the 2012 London Summer Olympics, a feat that no other American had previously done.

Yet instead of basking in the glory of the achievement, there has been a chorus of criticism towards Douglas. Might this be because of her strong, outspoken spirituality?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv3bXH-M8PY&w=560&h=315]

READ MORE at the DC-LausDeo blog

Laurie Anderson on the Olympics

Richard Nixon on the Olympics

Jesse Owens on Adversity

Commemorating the 40th Anniversary of the Munich Olympics Massacre

Masked Black September terrorist holding hostages during 1972 Munich Summer Olympics

Forty years ago, the International Olympics movement was stained in blood by terrorism by by one day in September during the second week of the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany.  In the second week of the XX Summer Olympiad, a group of Palestinian terrorists known as Black September killed two Israeli athletes and took nine Olympians hostage.  None of the Israeli hostages returned home alive.

The terrorists demanded that the Israeli government release 234 prisoners. The Palestianian gunmen also demanded that the Federal Republic of Germany release two inmates from their prisons.  To prove their resolve, the Black September terrorists tossed the body of wrestling coach Weinberg out the door (although the coach had been killed during the Palestinian terrorists raid).  

Initially, the games continued during this terrorist hostage situation. Twelve hours after the hostages were taken, Munich Olympic officials suspended the games. Negotiators offered an unlimited amount of money or substituting high ranking Germans but the Palestinian terrorists reply reportedly was "money means nothing to us; our lives mean nothing to us."  

A small squad of German Police tried to slink into the Olympic Village dressed in Olympic sweatsuits and carrying sub-machine guns.  As the redeployed border guards took up positions, the media broadcast the scene, giving the terrorists real time tactical information.  In response, the terrorists threatened to kill two hostages and the police presence disappeared. 

[L] Kehart Schorr [R] Andre Spitzer held hostage

 During the two days of being held hostage, negotiators wanted to have direct contact with the hostages to prove that they were still alive.  Fencing coach Andre Spitzer and shooting coach Kehat Schorr briefly had a dialogue with German officials from the second floor balcony as the Palestinian abductors held guns on them. Spitzer was fluent in German so as he attempted to answer a question, he was clubbed with a butt of an AK-47 machine gun and was pulled away from the window. Shortly afterwards, the German Interior Minister and the Mayor of the Olympic Village briefly spoke with the abducted Olympic athletes.

German officials feigned agreement to demands and convinced the Palestinian terrorists to be evacuated at Fürstenfeldbruck NATO airbase. The German military had planned an ambush on the airplane but decided to abort without informing the whole team. The Black September terrorists broke their word as they took the German helicopter pilot hostage as the shuttled their Israeli hostages in staggered groups. When the two lead terrorists realized that it was a trap, they headed back towards the helicopter.  The snipers failed to fell the Black September leader and just grazed the other terrorist. In the ensuing chaos, five of the eight terrorists were killed, a West German policeman died in the firefight but the terrorists tossed a grenade in the helicopter killing the remaining bound Israelis.

During the five hour Opening Ceremony of the 2012 London Summer Olympics, they could not find one minute to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Munich Massacre.   Officially, International Olympic Committee Chief Jaques Rogge stated that a moment of silence  for the Munich Massacre: "[W]as not appropriate".  During the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, the script was rewritten to commemorate the death of a luger the day of the Opening Ceremonies. What was more likely is that the IOC feared a boycott or withdrawal from the games by Arab countries.  The head of the Palestinian IOC team labeled the Munich Massacre minute of silence campaign as "racism".  


So many of those interested in the Olympics will enthuse about the Olympic ideals and international brotherhood.  The silence of the Olympic movement for not remembering the barbarism which stained the Olympic ideal speaks volumes.

Despite the fecklessness of the IOC and the London Olympics, the dignity of the murdered Israeli Olympians has not been forgotten, nor the barbarism of the terrorists. The silence of the international community shows the true character of the idealism of the Olympics. Moreover, the intolerance displayed by the Palestinian IOC is quite revealing to those who are willing to take off their rose colored glasses.

h/t: One Day In September

John Williams on the Olympics

John Williams conducting the Olympic orchestra for the 1996 Summer Olympiad in Atlanta, Georgia USA.

 
 Although the quality of the video from John Williams conducting the Olympic Orchestra in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California USA is shaky, the composition and the choreography is magnificent.