I'm up in Canada for the summer and enjoying the extended coverage the CBC provides. I think they show more actual sporting events. However, when they do put on one of those human-interest stories they're awful. Worse, the feature is usually followed by the Canadian losing badly at whatever sport they're competing in.

I have this objection even to actual action: Synchronized diving! Last night, we had girls doing synchronized diving, with serious commentary. Okay, I guess, but is this a sport?

Tonight! Yikes! We have young men in scanty little swim-suits trying to dive together. Not even fancy, complicated dives... Just scrawny fellows with cute haircuts and teeny-weeny swimsuits diving in sync.

For non-American citizens: This synchronized diving is the shortcut to understanding current American politics. People will vote for McCain if they see this, and believe it is faggy. And it IS faggy. People who can look at this with straight faces will vote for Obama.

This event, Men's Faggy Diving, is the opposite of John Wayne.

... I won't watch the Olympics on TV any more, or watch any TV actually, even though I fell in love with track and field watching the Rome Olympics of 1960 on black-and-white TV.

The real purpose of TV is to put out propaganda, and the promise of seeing a sports event is supposed to get your eyeballs so that you can see the propaganda, whether it be advertising or emotional stories about the viewing nation's athlete who was given a week to live when his/her whole family was blown up by terrorists, but after having both feet amputated is now kicking the whole world's ass and bringing home gold for Baby Jesus.

The purpose, however, is not to show the Olympics and inspire young people with a love of sport, but to deliver the propaganda to a mass audience.

This is why some of the events are rescheduled so they can be shown when the most people are likely to be home watching TV for lack of anything better to do.

Everybody likes to rag on NBC, but I have to give them credit for a number of things.

Between the cable hench-networks, the HD soccer and basketball dedicated channels, and the main network there is plenty to watch that has nothing to do with Americans. They had skeet shooting on the Universal HD channel yesterday. Not an American in sight which is fairly shocking to me considering how much we love guns and shooting in this country. Tons of boxing with few Americans present. Badminton! The cycling road race. Team handball! If you like the horse sports they are on non-stop on one channel or another. Every soccer match and every basketball game in HD without interrruption on their dedicated channels. They even cut out the 15 minutes of halftime on the taped soccer matches. Tennis. Weightlifting! Volleyball! Water Polo!

Of course the main network has swimming, gymnastics, diving, beach volleyball and the human interest stuff. But as King notes even that has not been as bad as people like to make it out to be.

And if your sport isn't on one of those million channels you can go to NBC's Olympic website and watch pretty much every other event live in very good video/audio quality. It is basically just the raw feed with the Olympic standard graphics and no commentary at all. Which can be a problem if you don't completely know the rules to a particular sport. Like the whistle every 10 seconds in field hockey.

I also give them credit for not shying away from the political/human rights issue. They talked about it during the opening ceremonies. They have talked about it at various other times including Costas' interview with Bush in which I thought he asked good questions.

So, thumbs up as far as I am concerned to NBC. I have been glued to my couch for the last several days already with my laptop on my lap.

Baseball continues. Here's what barely-.200-hitting, $18-million-per-season, 0-for-tonight Gary Sheffield says: "..unhappy with role on team"

Here's what the Tigers and the Tigers' fans say: "Retire!"

Seriously, smokes, the Canadian Broadcasting Company is doing a great job. For example, tonight, in men's gymnastics, they have focused on the Japanese team. Then they went to the American team toward the end, because the Americans have special issues.

Now they are back to the world's greatest Chinese. No "patriotic" horse-frocky. Good coverage.

Their Olympic coverage still sucks. I've tried watching gymnastics for the past couple of days, and discovered that NBC only really shows Chinese and American gymnasts. This is a little more understandable on the women's side because China and the US are favored. But there is not excuse for that on the men's side. Were the men were not even expected to medal; in the end it ending up being a tight race for the bronze medal but once again NBC failed to show significant coverage of the other teams.

I agree that NBC's coverage isn't as bad as some people make it out to be. (I'm north of the border, and at times I switch from CBC to NBC when there is a big event like a swimming medal event going on but CBC is showing Canadians doing rowing heats.)

But what the heck is NBC doing putting a "Live" logo on the screen for content that is anything but? Last night I watched the thrilling 4x100 freestyle "live" on NBC after I'd already seen the results on the New York Times website. Then tonight I watched China win the mens team gymnastic competition on CBC. An hour later, during one of CBC's appalling non-sports features I flipped over to NBC, and they were showing the same gymnastics action I'd already seen, claiming it was "live".

Is NBC running an exceptionally long tape delay to avoid wardrobe malfunctions?

The difference in coverage between the peacock and the supporting networks is night and day (or maybe primetime and night). The personal profiles I can actually handle -- I agree with King that they've encroached since Athens, but it's still nowhere as bad as it used to be.

And since I'm pulling for the US in general, focus on our athletes isn't a bad thing per se. But, as noted above, there comes a point where the America-centrism detracts from the reportage of the event. The commentators are supposed to be serving something of a reporting function, are they not? Where indeed were the Japanese gymnasts? Was it really necessary to get dozens of reaction shots from the brutally irritating Jonathan Horton? Never in my life have I felt so relentlessly updated on what another human being is "talkin 'bout!!!!!"

The worst offenders were the color commentators, especially Tim Daggett (gymanstics) and Rowdy Gaines (swimming). The pro-American boosterism and the almost gleeful scorn heaped upon any mistake made by an opposing athlete was over the top. The lead announcers tended to play it down the middle a bit better, with the exception of human oddity Al Trautwig.