...but then you had to resort to this pile of cliches to finish off your underwhelming stint as Salon's Olympic grump.

This was a particularly telling admission:

...in which venues have been built on a massive scale for great show, and not for the convenience of those poor souls who actually dare to get in and out...

I went to the Spain vs. USA basketball final on Sunday. Caught a cab there from the other side of town, which took 20 minutes in light traffic. Walked a block. Breezed through the security checks in 3 minutes flat. Found my seat in a similar amount of time. At the end, walked half a block to the subway, and got directly on to a train -- no waiting. Got off after three stops and caught a cab home.

I went to the closing ceremony on Sunday night. Caught a cab to the "cab drop-off zone" about a block from the stadium. Security lines took less than 10 minutes. Found my seat in about half that. Waited 3 minutes in line to buy water. Hung around after the "end" for three or four minutes texting some of the photos I'd taken to friends around the world. Walked out without any delays -- and walked three blocks to Line 5 for a smooth subway ride home.

Your racism strawman was also wonderfully inept:

Nor is it some sort of "racism," a charge that would sure have surprised my first wife (a Beijing native), to point out that not enough post-event buses were provided

You're right, it's not. But that's not why your earlier articles were, indeed, racist. Good that you're checking the letters section; bad that you don't seem to have understood what was written there.

And pulling in your "first wife" as some kind of automatic deflection shield? About as convincing as the homophobe who is keen to blurt that "A lot of my friends are gay!"

So back to one of my first questions to one of your first piles of bile: where are you Krich?! Because you sure as hell weren't in Beijing for the Olympics.

Now, that's not to say you weren't physically present, and faxing in your pre-written articles clearly enabled a lot of time at Happy Endings Massage, but I'm afraid you score a 9 for over-used China cliches, a 3 for journalistic integrity (making up "facts" about Beijing's subway system remains a personal fave), and a one for insightful reportage on these Olympic Games.

A final quote from the article, just for fun:

...the first clear view below that I'd ever had in hundreds of takeoffs and landings...

I've flown in and out of Beijing at least once a month for the past 6 years. That, of course, makes slightly less than a hundred "takeoffs and landings". I've seen Beijing on clear days from the air dozens of times. You've had "hundreds" of cycles and this is your first clear view?

So is that one more Krich lie to the tally, or three? Or don't you even bother counting anymore?

Krich writes (in an episode where he grudgingly deigns to enjoy Beijing despite his every personal effort to ensure the opposite):

And how to explain why Beijing has always been a center of ferment and enormous free personal space amid regimentation?

Great question! Why has it? Why is it? And, striking "Beijing" from that sentence and inserting "China" -- why is it still true?

Answering that question will require more than the usual American anxieties and transplanting of decades-dead cliches ("Red" China, anyone?)

Answering that question requires excellent Mandarin, years building authentic friendships in China (not, note-ye-well, business relationships) and the courage to endure living in a culture where you are the "other".

Or, on the other hand, you could simply listen to the answers that the Chinese have fashioned for themselves. Strangely, most find that harder...

It's so hard to get hyperbole and cod-outrage just right, but this article nailed it!

Laugh-out-loud funny, and yet informative and pacy.

Great sports writing!

(And as a 6 foot 6 beanpole, I, for one, welcome our new, taller, overlords... *grin*)

An Olympic article from you that's interesting, and mostly without the fact-free slurs with which you've padded out your previous efforts -- I like it.

Here's what I wrote elsewhere about the eventual (down to the last shot!) Indian victory in the shooting event you mention:

Shooting -- the most boring sport in the world -- was utterly transformed yesterday by an utterly amazing competition between a Finn, a Chinese, and an Indian. The Olympics literally doesn't get better than that. I watched it in a Beijing suburb with an air-conditioned McDonald's upper floor full of laobaixing (Chinese for "regular folk") sitting in front of their small sodas (the price of occupying a table), who reacted to the eventual Indian victory with the most incredibly generous and warm-hearted statements. I am a stone-hearted cynic, and I was moved to tears.

Cheers!

Amusing, considering it's in an otherwise excellent article about being a "jerk" around know-nothing amateurs, is this line:

She swam back and forth in the pool, performing the stroke called freestyle.

Nuh-uh. "Freestyle" is the name of the race. The stroke most people perform in that race is called the front crawl (aka the Australian crawl).

Maybe someday some swimmer will invent a faster stroke -- and then suffer the indignity of having people call it "freestyle" -- turning them into a "jerk" around people watching swimming races...

Bravo! I think I _very nearly_ managed to say in several paragraphs what you brilliantly said in two lines!