<p>In case you haven&rsquo;t heard, the Summer Olympics officially begin this Friday in Beijing. Chances are you have heard all about this year&rsquo;s games, but you don&rsquo;t really care. You might claim to care during group conversations or to hold on to some novel idea of patriotism, but you don&rsquo;t really care because most of the sports bore you and in the month of August there are better things to do than watch air rifle competitions.</p> <p>But it's OK to have pent up frustrations about the Olympics, and how they make you feel like such a red, white and blue tool. I&rsquo;m here to let you know that most of us other common folk feel the same way about the Olympics as you do. Not many people in America really, truly care about the Olympics, for the same reasons we don&rsquo;t really care about policies in Washington or violence in Africa: it seemingly doesn&rsquo;t affect them personally.</p> <p>No matter how much NBC and its sister networks want to convince us, we all know that each USA victory in a random event doesn&rsquo;t fill us with as much pride as it would have in 1984. Americans aren&rsquo;t as patriotic as they once were due to the road our country has been heading down in recent months and years.</p> <p>And watching athletes we&rsquo;ve never seen before the opening ceremonies go off to win medals in sports most of Middle America doesn&rsquo;t give a crap about isn&rsquo;t going to make us forget about gas prices or the housing crisis. Sure, it might fill us with some pride momentarily, but then we&rsquo;ll go back to our daily issues and problems.</p> Cory Barker, Indiana Daily Student olympics, china, usa, patriotism, media, economy, selfish, sports the-feed 1 2008-08-08T09:42:42-04:00 <p>Does winning a gold medal in the heptathalon help anyone pay their bills? The media circus surrounding the Olympics is up and running again, overflowing with hyperbole and fanfare. But as much as NBC and their sponsors want us to feel like our national pride is at stake, at the end of the day it's just a bunch of obscure sports. This writer thinks we've got something more important to worry about: ourselves.</p> 3 1532 olympic-apathy 2008-08-08T09:42:54-04:00 true false true false false Olympic Apathy #<Image:0x2b78a64e8be0> 2008-09-17T04:44:25-04:00 http://www.idsnews.com/news/story.aspx?id=62132 11 301