High life
Bad sports at the Olympics
Taki
One thousand five hundred and three years later, the Olympics were back in my hometown and things were hunky-dory for a while. True amateurs competed in a sportsmanlike manner and they even let women take part. Then, as always, history repeated itself. With Nero long gone, the sporting powers that be came up with something even worse, the professional NBA African-American basketball player. This is a freak of sorts, more than 7-ft tall, with arms hanging lower than its knees, its tongue permanently sticking out, an inces- santly trash-talking thug who believes gra- ciousness and sportsmanship are capital offences punishable by death. Needless to say, basketball soon infected track and field events, with Maurice Green, the fastest man on earth, preening on the victory podium, flapping his arms as if he were a bird, and finally holding his crotch as the national anthem was being played. Poor Jesse Owens. I hate to think what he's going through as he's watching the freak show from above.
Mind you, it all has to do with political correctness. The belittling of opponents, the lack of graciousness, the trash-talking and the out-and-out thuggish behaviour were standardised by black professional American athletes. There are no ifs or buts about it. Officials as well as the media were too intimidated by political correctness to tell the bums to behave or else. Ugly behaviour became the norm, and soon Afro-Caribbeans were trying to emulate their American cousins. The irony was that pure Africans remained sportsmanlike and gracious. Remember the paper-thin Angolan basketball player who was elbowed to the ground by the humongous Charles Barkley of the US during the Barcelona Olympics, and smiled in retalia- tion? If anyone has seen a Kenyan or an Ethiopian preen on a victory stand, or behave in an unsportsmanlike manner, I offer them a lifetime supply of front-seat tickets to NBA games as punishment for lying.
No wonder the Aussies booed the grotesque Americans. Taunting defeated opponents, as American sprinters and bas- ketball players did, has to be as ugly as it gets. Unfortunately, very few newspapers reported the horror of these American ambassadors abroad. The New York Times, as tendentious and politically-correct a newspaper as it is possible to get, ignored the ugliness altogether. Dead drunk at Elaine's after the Greek victory in the 200 metres (and once again madly in love, with 26-year old Ashley Smith — at least I think her name is Ashley Smith) I crouched down and simulated my countryman's vic- tory over seven Afro-Caribbeans and African Americans, 'They were as jealous as Othello and twice as dark,' I announced, only to be told in no uncertain terms that I was a racist and a fascist. (It was by a very unattractive woman whose looks I refused to improve with a Glasgow hello.) I do not, of course, have a racist bone in my body, if racism means disliking some- one because of the colour of their skin. Refusing to approve unacceptable behaviour does not a racist make. On the contrary. Al Paul Craig Roberts wrote recently, tyranny is creeping up on us. He compares the present state of affairs where PC is concerned with one of the most prominent hallmarks of the Nazi and com- munist regimes. No one could voice an opinion contrary to the views enforced by the Gestapo and the KGB. 'Media and education were used to instill politically- correct thinking and bring denunciation upon anyone who departed from it.'
Always according to Roberts, there were two groups, victims and oppressors. In the Soviet Union the oppressors were the bourgeoisie, which held sway over an oppressed proletariat. In the USA today, the oppressors are male white heterosexu- als, with the victims being women, blacks, homosexuals, lesbians, Hispanics, Orientals and anyone who might come under the word 'ethnic'. And that includes the multi- millionaires who play in the NBA and have just represented America in Sydney. It is a ghastly state of affairs, made tolerable only by the fact that Southampton out of season is lovely and there is not a single victim within a radius of ten miles.
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