My father despises Jimmy Carter. Not that he has an ongoing love affair with the rest of the Democratic Party either, but he reserves the full weight of his contempt for Carter. A time-honored “Dinnertime Debate With Dad” rhetorical tactic: refer to the arrogance and stupidity of Democrats; point to the welfare system and Social Security as proof; make snide comment about Ted Kennedy’s weight; commence firing big guns by listing each of the Carter administration’s faulty policies in chronological order; wait for under-informed, bleeding-heart-liberal child to wave white flag. I always feel sort of sorry for Jimmy Carter – not because my father has called him a bonehead through a mouthful of food about a thousand times, but because he seems like a well-
meaning sort of guy who brought his buck teeth and his deeply strange family to the White House and proceeded to get in way over his head. But at the time of his presidency, I despised Jimmy Carter too, because he wouldn’t let American athletes compete at the Olympics in Moscow.

Looking back, I don’t envy my parents the task of explaining a politically-motivated Olympic boycott to a seven-year-old. A seven- year-old couldn’t care less about the Cold War or the possibility of athletes passing state secrets to each other or teaching Brezhnev a lesson; a seven-year-old just wants to watch Bruce Jenner kick some ass. But American seven-year-olds had to stage the decathlon with their Barbies that year, and this seven-year-old held Jimmy Carter personally responsible (and this eleven-year-old found it just as stupid and short-sighted when nobody from the Eastern bloc deigned to show up in Los Angeles four years later – let’s face it, if the Soviets had sent their gymnasts in 1984, Mary Lou Retton would have gotten her head handed to her). I didn’t have a peaceful, why-can’t-we-all- just-get-along motivation, either. I wanted the Americans to march out onto that archery range and show those hairy East Germans what was what, and then I wanted to sing along with the national anthem and yell witty things like “I got your superpower right here, jerky” at the television.

Now, we all live in a global village with a single German team and only two years between each Olympiad, and I still love watching the Olympics, and I still get choked up when an American climbs up onto the medal platform and they play The Star Spangled Banner and raise the American flag. In 1992, a kid named Nelson Diebel from my class at Princeton won the gold in swimming’s 100 meters, and I jumped up and down in our den and yelled, “I KNOW THAT GUY! I KNOW THAT GUY!” and shed a few tears of pride even though I don’t think Nelson knew me from a hole in the ground, and Picabo Street’s Chapstick ads really work my nerves, but when I watched her singing her head off the other night and trying not to cry, I forgave her. (But I also wondered to myself what happens if her hometown decides to name a street after her – do they call it “Picabo Street” or “Picabo Street Street”?) I live for the cheesy moments, like the moment when the Japanese speed skater won the gold medal and CBS showed the middle-aged men from the skater’s office wearing their Team Japan headbands and cheering and crying, or when they show old slo-mo footage of Gordeeva and Grinkov, gliding across the ice and looking utterly cute together, and then they show present-day Gordeeva with their daughter and the announcer somberly intones something about how after Grinkov’s death Gordeeva “had to go on with the business of life . . . alone” and if you’ll excuse me, I have to get some Kleenex and mop the tears off of my keyboard before it shorts out.

Ah, Olympic figure skating. The drama . . . the romance . . . the fugly costumes . . . a Melrosean spectacle that suctions me to the front of my television set every time. Let’s start with the drama, neatly wrapped by CBS into maudlin packages guaranteed to jerk a tear from the stoniest of eyes. Apparently, an Olympic figure skater must not only know how to skate but also must overcome a surreal number of obstacles in order to compete at the Games: “After her father accidentally beheaded her during a friendly game of badminton, Lexi McMurtry spent the next year in the hospital, fingering the stitches in her neck and dreaming of the day when she could once again take the ice. That day came in March of 1995, when a disfigured but wiser Lexi – wearing a costume lovingly sewn by her blind, lupus-addled, one-thumbed grandmother – skated to victory in the Michigan state championships. Fans still remember the bravery of her performance; after a never-before-attempted quintuple axel broke her ankle clean through on landing, she continued her long program, refusing to stop even after a critical seam on her leotard split, scattering the ice with perilous sequins and leaving her as naked as a newborn. But the program ended happily in more ways than one. While in the hospital receiving treatment for her frostbitten nipples, Lexi bumped into a fellow skater in the waiting room. Todd Bailey, whose then-partner Mary Catherine Maleszuskey had lodged the toe of her skate in Todd’s left buttock following a disappointing performance, introduced himself from his gurney. Love bloomed on that seemingly grim afternoon, and as Lexi helped Todd recover from his gluteal amputation, she found herself considering pairs skating – as well as a more tender partnership. Fast forward to Nagano 1998, when Todd and Lexi – now husband and wife – look forward to taking home a medal for the US team . . . and for the memory of all that they have lost. Todd vows not to let his lopsided posterior interfere with his performance, and Lexi agrees that their medical travails have made them stronger skaters psychologically, predicting that ëheads are gonna roll.’ Back to you in the studio, Greg.” Dirt-poor childhoods, training regimens reminiscent of the military, favorite relatives with one foot in the grave, psychological torture – you name it, CBS rolls it out for background, then finishes it off with a love story just in time to catch the scoring of the short program.

And I do find the skating – at least the pairs skating – dreamy, and not only the “pairs” part. I can negotiate roller skates without too much embarrassment, but I cannot ice skate at all. Even under the best of circumstances, with chunky sneakers on my feet and no alcohol in my bloodstream, I have terrible balance, so for me ice skating means clinging to the edge of the rink with white knuckles, losing sensation in my fingers, letting go, taking three or four wobbly-ankled steps, feeling more confident, taking a bolder stride, shrieking in horror as both feet punish my arrogance by shooting out from underneath me, continuing to shriek as I windmill my arms wildly and kick my legs Rockette-style in the vain hope of feeling some solid ground under my feet, knocking over innocent people as I flounder across the ice, still shrieking, losing the last vestige of control over my legs, becoming completely airborne, hearing some broomball-
playing hockey-haired no-neck yell “TIIIIIIIIIIIMMMMBBEEEEERRRRRRRRR,” and finally crashing to the ice tailbone-first as the shriek dies away from my lips and resumes, albeit silently, in my coccyx, and then I wait for the Zamboni to run over me and spare me the utter shame of crawling back to the bench at the side of the rink and saying things like, “Crying? Oh, no, I just have some melted snow on my face, NOT TO MENTION ALL OVER THE BACK OF MY BRUISED AND HUMILIATED BODY.” I wish I could skate; the Olympic skaters make it look like flying – yes, flying while wearing a outfit inspired by Flash Gordon, but flying nonetheless. It looks effortless when they do it, and graceful, and fun, not mortifying and painful.

Some people dismiss the ice skating as “girly.” Last night I went out to dinner with the Disco Biscuit’s parents, and Mrs. Biscuit and I tried to convince the menfolk that ice skating requires just as much strength and agility as any other sport, but they just snorted. I would like to see the Biscuit put on skates and a Lycra ensemble and whip me around over his head, my extremely sharp skate blades passing within millimeters of his face, and then put me down without dropping me (not, I assure you, his strong suit), and then jump and turn around three times in the air and land without falling down, and then do a sit-spin synchronized with mine, and then come out of the spin and lift me up over his head, again, in spite of the inevitable dizziness, and THEN call ice skating “girly.” I would also like to object for the fifteen-thousandth time to the term “girly” as an insult. Just because girls do it, or girls like it, doesn’t automatically make it wimpy or lame. It makes it something girls do or like – NOT THE SAME THING. “Chick” does not always equal “weak.” “Chick” does not always equal “sucky.” At Nagano this year, “chick” equals “Russian figure skater who escaped an abusive relationship with a former partner who planted his blade TWO INCHES INTO HER SKULL, and who recovered in time to win a silver medal at the 1998 Olympics A MERE TWO YEARS LATER,” and if that makes her wimpy and lame, then I would very much like someone to add my name to the list of wimpy and lame girly chicks, thank you very much.

Anyhow. At least she didn’t celebrate her victory by toking a fatty, like certain Canadian snowboarders I might name. Well, I actually might not name him because I can’t remember how to spell his name, but I still find it pretty funny that once again Canada, a country that Americans tend to think of as bland and boring, has incited a drug scandal at the Olympics. Evidently, the drug test revealed that he had indulged in marijuana; he defended himself by saying that his friends had smoked pot all around him, but he himself had not partaken. Hmmm . . . haven’t we heard that excuse before? From our morally grounded Chief Executive, perhaps? Frankly, I didn’t mind if Clinton had ripped the occasional tube (if anything, it proved that unlike many politicians he had once had some semblance of a life), and I don’t mind if this snowboarding guy did, either – theoretically, the restrictions on drug use apply primarily to performance-enhancing drugs, and only a lava lamp has its performance enhanced by pot, so in my opinion the IOOC made the right decision by letting him keep his medal. As long as he doesn’t pose a danger to anyone else on the course or give himself an unfair advantage, I don’t really care. I could have done without the American snowboarder claiming that the incident had reinforced an unfair and false stereotype of snowboarders as stoners. Oh, please. Stereotypes don’t materialize from thin air, “dude,” so if you must comment, call the brouhaha unfortunate and leave it at that, but don’t give us this both-an-athlete- and-a-scholar crap, because McDonald’s feeds the athletes at the Olympics, and everybody knows you need a serious case of the munchies to make that grease go down.

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