Quote of the Day | August 22, 2008: Chuck Klosterman on the Olympics, Part 1

I've watched very little of the Olympics since I moved out of my parents house over 10 years ago. Some of what Chuck Klosterman rails against here makes perfect sense to me, but he's a lot more zealous in his feelings than I am. I get what he's saying about critical thinking, but I guess I just don't take the Olympics that seriously to be so worked up about it. Still, the always thought-provoking Klosterman frames the issue in a way that gets the synapses firing.

From Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas, 2006:

For as long as I can remember, the Olympics have been completely and utterly unmoving; this is ironic, inasmuch as we're all about to spend the next three weeks being reminded about how emotive and heartwrenching and dramatic these games are alleged to be. This is not something I need to be reminded of, particularly since the only thing the Olympics ever do is reinforce my dislike for a specific kind of American sports fan: people who like the home team simply because the home team is, in fact, the home team.

It was during the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles when I realized how ridiculous casual sports fans tend to be, and how most people's opinion of what they care about has nothing to do with thinking. I realized this when Zola Budd collided with Mary Decker Slaney during the 3,000 meters. This -- as you may remember -- was a huge controversy. And while I was following the controversy on my beanbag in front of our twenty-one-inch Zenith, something occurred to me: Why the fuck is everyone in this country suddenly concerned with women's distance running? Had this race happened in the summer of 1983, little barefoot Zola could have beaten Mary Decker with a pair of nonchuckus and it probably wouldn't have been mentioned in USA Today.

This is when I started to realize that the Olympics are designed for people who want to care about something without considering why.

In order to enjoy the Olympics, you can't think critically about anything; you just have to root for America (or whatever country you're from) and assume your feelings are inherently correct. It's the same kind of antilogic you need to employ whenever you attend a political convention or a church service or movies directed by Steven Spielberg. . . .

We're all supposed to take inspiration from Sada Jacobson, who (I'm told) is the world's number-one female fencer, which is kind of like being the world's number-one Real World/Road Rules Challenge participant. Everyone is going to be ecstatic about the prospect of Michael Phelps winning as many as eight gold medals in swimming, even though I have yet to find a single person who knows who Michael Phelps is. This is what I hate about the Olympics, and it's also what I hate about typical sports enthusiasts: I hate the idea that rooting for a team without justification somehow proves that you are traditional, loyal, and "a true fan." All it proves is that you're ridiculous, and that you don't really consider the motivations that drive your emotions, and that you probably care more about geography and the color of the uniform than you do about any given sport.

I have a sportswriter friend who constantly attempts to paint me as a soulless hypocrite, simply because I adored the Boston Celtics in 1986 but I'm wholly ambivalent toward them today. His argument makes no sense to me. I have no idea why my feelings about an organization twenty years ago should have any effects on how I think now. The modern Celtics have different players, a different coach, a different offense, different management, different ownership, and they play in a different arena; the only similarity between these two squads is that they both wear green and they both used the same parquet floor.

I'm not rooting for flooring.

*Originally appeared in Esquire, 2004

Tags: Chuck Klosterman IV, Olympics