Blogcritics The critical lens on today's culture & entertainment
Continuing to further demonstrate what a bunch of narcissistic crybabies American citizens are, many have taken to the blogosphere to complain that the Olympics aren’t everything they would like them to be. Life never is and you would think these computer jockeys in particular would be used to that notion by now.
Oddly enough, a few people have enough free time to be outraged by the revelation that nine-year-old Lin Miaoke was not lip-synching to her own voice but to that of seven-year-old Yang Peiyi. The opening ceremonies are sheer entertainment and the producers went with, in their opinion, a better-looking kid. Apparently some folks don’t know how show business works because this tactic is nothing new. I would suggest a rental of All About Eve to help shed some light on the matter, but I can just imagine all the bellyaching when they discover the movie is in black and white.
Sure, it’s not fair to Yang, but life ain’t, so the kid gets an early life lesson, which is much better than the ones some Chinese girls get who literally are thrown into the garbage. Skimming the blogs you would think she got treated worse than the teenagers found dead in the Lihua Textile Factory due to the literally hazardous working conditions.
The largest contingent of the self-absorbed are those on the West Coast who are upset they have to wait (heaven, help us) three hours to see the events on television. They obviously have no idea how the business of television works. NBC paid $894 million for the broadcast rights. To reach the widest audience in an effort to charge top dollar for commercial time, they want to show the games during prime time when presumably the most eyes are available, which is how television works. With traffic, most people who work a day job aren’t usually home until 6:00 pm. I have yet to see an advertiser request the games go live and miss out on potential viewers to ads for their product.
These whiners also don’t understand the network-affiliate business relationship. Stations that are owned and operated by NBC could show the games live, if they wished, but three hours earlier would cut into affiliate’s time. What television owner is going to give away airtime and lose out on commercial revenue? Until the games get shown on CSPAN, which isn’t likely to ever happen, I would request that bloggers stop embarrassing themselves because it’s obvious none of them know this business, let alone ever run one.
Understandably, no one likes being taken for a fool, especially those people too dumb to realize no one is taking them for a fool. Some people actually think they are being duped, as if NBC is running a con, because it says “LIVE” in the top corner even when in fact it isn’t on the West Coast. Apparently, NBC gave some viewers too much credit for their intelligence because it’s been no secret that East Coast and West Coast are in different time zones. Apparently, some feel NBC should spend the money to have a person go back into the broadcast video before it is transmitted across the country and remove the graphics, a needless expense suggested by someone deluded into thinking the Olympics are for their enjoyment rather than a money-making endeavor for NBC. Besides, it may not be possible to remove the graphics after they have been added to the video signal.
An Oregon man epitomizes this idiocy and oddly takes some sort of pride in the fact that he is wasting taxpayers’ money by filing a complaint with the FCC. He claims that it is not only false but deceptive, even though it didn’t deceive him. Unless employees of NBC are attempting to run some con game similar to The Sting where they are gambling on the delayed results, I don’t see where the deception lies since everyone has access to the results. NBC doesn’t have a monopoly on the information. Besides, if by some miracle the FCC levied fines, NBC would fight the case and the litigation on behalf of the government would be at the taxpayers’ expense. This same blogger complains about the waste of taxpayer money on his blog, yet contributes to it. Considering it took four years of legal expenses for the Janet Jackson indecency fines to be thrown out, essentially accomplishing nothing except a waste of time and money, I would request he withdraw the request if I wasn’t certain it wasn’t going straight into the circular file after being laughed at by interns.
Some people are having the games ruined because other news outlets are providing real time results. It’s not surprising since they are also in the business of getting eyeballs to their channels and websites and don’t want to lose these people to NBC, but it is very easy to avoid the information if an effort is made. Here are some tips:
- Don’t turn on any news or sports channels. Pretend it’s like when the writers’ strike took place and your favorite shows weren’t on. (On second thought, that may be a bad idea because I imagine these same people complained during that time as well.)
- Wait three hours after an event you want to see is completed before checking your email. You aren’t that important and it’s most likely just spam anyway. It can wait to be deleted and there’s more coming. Besides, if someone really needed to get a hold of you, they would call.
- You don’t need to update Twitter. Your actual obsession over others’ potential obsession with your whereabouts and activities is unhealthy. Besides, if you really needed to tell someone what you were doing, you would call them.
The only good thing to come from the Olympic outcry in the blogosphere is that the Special Olympics now knows where they can go to get coverage because some special bloggers have a lot of free time on their hands.
