Ugly Americans: A Look At The Worst Of #NBCFail

Courtesy: New York Observer.

By Guest Contributor Kendra James

NBC tried, it really did.

It’s easy to say that one shouldn’t let one network destroy the way we view the Olympics as a whole, but when you’re nearly out of patience by the end of the Opening Ceremonies, you know it’s going to be an interesting event.

But after a week or so to consider and collect our thoughts, it’s time to acknowledge the “best” of the worst of the network’s telecast of the 30th Summer Olympiad–if only because the network has the Olympics through 2020. This is a fact, a fixed point in time and space, that we in America are going to have to accept for another three sets of Games (Sochi, Rio, and Peyongchang).

Despite NBC’s decision to cut part of the Opening Ceremonies, make insulting comments at the expense of countries whose names they found amusing , and air a commercial featuring a gymnast monkey after Bob Costas’ “Master Class On Race” featuring Gabby Douglas were questionable, yes. But they were by no means the only ones looking to medal in the Olympic Hate and Journalistic Biases competition.

Olympic gymnast Gabby Douglas. Courtesy: The Grio/Associated Press.

Featuring Douglass on Brian Williams’ news magazine Rock Center was a good start. They even dubbed her ‘America’s Sweetheart,’ which made it altogether stranger when they didn’t quite treat her as such. In attempting to create their own realities, NBC has a habit of picking their favorite, most marketable athletes and promoting their stories to the point where it’s as if their victory is solely by NBC’s behest.

Despite her appearance on Rock Center, their subsequent coverage of and following Gabby’s gold medal all-around win had more lows than highs.

Worse than the aforementioned gymnast monkey commercial (an ad promoting Animal Practice, a show whose existence alone should serve to prove that NBC is well past its prime), was the speech delivered by Costas beforehand.

You know, it’s a happy measure of how far we’ve come that it doesn’t seem all that remarkable, but still it’s noteworthy, Gabby Douglas is, as it happens, the first African-American to win the women’s all-around in gymnastics. The barriers have long since been down, but sometimes there can be an imaginary barrier, based on how one might see oneself.

Those imaginary barriers can be a bitch, y’all.

The imaginary sacrifices you have to make as the single mother of three children with an ex-husband serving in the military. The imaginary comments that any non-white child competing in a traditionally white space is bound to hear while she’s on the come-up. The imaginary time you have to put into that one child despite having two others. Oh, and all that imaginary money you’ve gotta spend to become competitive in a sport like gymnastics.

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