2022 Winter Olympics Archives

I usually love watching winter sports, especially the figure skating, but also the ski races. This year, as has often been the case in the past, there’s controversy surrounding the Olympics.

Here’s some pros and cons on watching the Beijing Olympics.

Pros

It will entertain you and you will enjoy. Yes, this is important to your mental health, especially after all the turmoil and angst of the last couple of years (pandemics, politics, you name it!)
Support the athletes. Most of these young people have been working all their lives to get to this elite level to compete on the world stage. They deserve an audience, and for winter sports, that audience and window are brief.

Pretty, yes? Is not China, it’s Wisconsin, but it’s a winter photo from a couple of years ago. (there’s no snow where I live)

Support the tradition. At its heart, the Olympic ideal is a good one – to bring the youth of the world together in the name of sport. This, ideally, extends to their future lives where they will use this experience to work in the spirit of cooperation and diplomacy.
The commercials might be the best part. Rich corporations spare no expense to debut Olympics-specific ads during the games. This goes back to my first point on being entertained, but on a different level.
You need a break from Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Amazon and all the rest. Honestly. On a recent visit to my ophthalmologist, when he asked me what I’d been doing during the big P, I said watching a lot of Netflix. He asked, “did you finish?” I said I was close.

Where there are pros, there are also:

Cons

China is an authoritarian regime that currently operates concentration camps for its Uigher (or Uygher) Muslim minority. It’s criminal, it’s disgusting, it’s crimes against humanity. By watching the Beijing Olympics, you give tacit approval to the host country and its actions.
Don’t reward NBC. Like most giant media corporations, its news division will report on how awful China’s brutal regime is to the Uighers and Hong Kong, but still will rake in the bucks from the sports side, the Olympics. They went for the money instead of for what’s right and decent.

Not Los Angeles or China, the blogger in Shorewood, WI, in winter.

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Don’t reward China for its attempt at legitimization. By hosting these Olympics, the dictator Xi Jinping who runs China hopes to get world recognition for his authoritarian corruption. We’ve seen this movie before – Hitler in 1936, Moscow in 1980. At least in 1980, the United States found its balls and did not reward the USSR by sending a team there.
Finally, it’s a time suck and you know it. You have other things to do (like watch the Super Bowl, maybe? Needlepoint? Surely there’s something). It’s always a paradox: watching extremely fit young people competing for medals while you sink ever deeper into the recliner, your poor aging body atrophying by the minute. . .

Those are some thoughts on the pros and cons of watching the Beijing Olympics.

My choice? Perhaps it will be a hybrid, where I watch a few highlights after the fact on youtube or something like that. So I guess I will reward Google (owner of youtube) instead of NBC. Or maybe not. Maybe I’ll just find my balls and work on my own winter fitness.

Better late than never. Finally giving credit where credit is due. To gay Olympians Adam Rippon and Gus Kenworthy for allowing me be a little bit gayer with my dad.

The media reminded me this morning that the Olympics are coming back, next week, to Beijing, China.

(The utter absurdity/hypocrisy of hosting something which is supposed to bring the world together in an authoritarian state with currently operating concentration camps is the subject of another post, however, I want to acknowledge this insane fact.)

But I digress. I originally wrote a note to myself to do this post in 2018. Life interfered.

2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea

The 2018 Winter Olympics were held in PyeongChang, South Korea, in February. I was back in Milwaukee (Shorewood, to be exact) to help my dad as he’d aged to the point of needing quite a bit of assistance with the everyday things of life.

In addition to that, one of my sisters had become disabled the year before from a series of strokes and was now living in a convalescent home (where she still lives as of this writing in 2022).

My father and my sister were particularly close, so adjusting to these new realities was incredibly sad and a real challenge for the entire family.

Wisconsin is quite cold (OK, it’s fucking freezing — and dark) in the winter so, holed up as we were mostly indoors, the Olympics provided some delightful relief.

And it turned out to be truly delightful, most of all because of Adam and Gus, not just one cute gay Olympic star, but two, count ’em, two.

Adam Rippon

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It was also political, since Adam Rippon refused to meet with homophobe VP (at the time) Mike Pence. It’s a stance I admired then, and even more so as time goes by. You stick to your guns. Adam said something like “fun fact: there are huge benefits to being who you really are 100% of the time” which I just adored.

Because I never would have been able to say that in my 20s. I really can’t even imagine what that would have been like to say that to the world. What a wonderful role model for anyone younger – as well as those of us us decades older.

Gus Kenworthy

And Gus — Gus simply presented to me how a happy gay guy who was also an elite athlete would act during his competition. Smiling his million dollar smile, kissing his cute boyfriend before and after his runs, giving charming interviews to the press just like any normal hero who has the world by the tail.

Because he was/is a normal hero who doesn’t give a flying F what anyone thinks of his being totally, unapologetically out.

So how does all this relate to my dad? I would look up the times when Adam and/or Gus would be on the tube and make sure we were watching them. He didn’t mind, in fact I think he enjoyed it, particularly liking Rippon’s stance against Pence (my father loathed the Trump administration).

As odd as it might have been watching male figure skating with my straight father, it was also liberating, as this is the person who introduced me and my siblings to Broadway, to Judy Garland, to Barbra Streisand, to the magical dancing of Gene Kelly, to so much more.

As much as I stifled the urge to squeal whenever Gus would smooch his boyfriend (and the cameras were always there to catch it) my dad watched it with me and didn’t say a word. One time when I was out of the family room to do something in the kitchen, he yelled at me, “Jim, you better get in here, Adam’s about to go on, you don’t wanna miss this!”

It’s These Moments that Make Up Our Lives

It’s the little things. My dad knew I was gay, of course, but it’s not something we discussed a lot. I’d often felt a failure since I’ve never dragged any man those 2,000 miles from California to meet my parents, when all seven of my siblings had married opposite sex partners. I’d never communicated that to either of my parents, but it’s something I thought I should probably do.

I don’t know if that will ever happen, it’s not something on my radar, but whatever, Dad will not be around regardless. He died a few days before Christmas, 2018, at 89.

Blogger Jim Arnold with his father James W. Arnold in 2018. — Last pic taken with my dad (James W. Arnold), September 2018, in a diner in Cedarburg, WI.

So, thanks Adam and Gus, who probably have no idea the effect they have had collectively on millions of LGBTQ. Or maybe they do. You let me be a little bit gayer with my dad.

Fun fact: There are great rewards to being who you are, all the time.