Blow up the Olympics

So my uninformed assumptions about the Olympics have largely proved correct. Nonetheless, I have found myself watching some of it. The swimming is great. The rest of it, eh. (Synchronized diving is a particularly stupid "sport," I've decided.)

But especially bad is the "women's" gymnastics.

Let's call this for what it is: "prepubescent girls'" gymnastics. It's obscene and shouldn't be an international sport, as Buzz Bissinger explained pretty convincingly in the New York Times. Worst of all is this Chinese "women's" gymnastics team, which clearly doesn't include a single athlete who would qualify as a "woman," under generally accepted principles of womanhood. They are girls. If any of them are 16 years old, I'm 25.

Go beyond stripping the Chinese of their team gold medal, which absolutely should be the result of their cheating. Get rid of the sport entirely. Or at least raise the minimum age of participation to 18 -- generally accepted as adulthood -- and enforce it by requiring documentation more substantial than a passport.

If it's going to be called "women's" gymnastics, require the participants to BE women. I'd feel a lot more comfortable watching them prance around in makeup and leotards.

Taking down the Olympics

I'm not a big fan of the Olympics. Honestly, I'll probably be paying more attention to preseason NFL activities and plotting my fantasy football drafts than I will to NBC's tape-delayed, inevitably obsequious and credulous broadcasts of the Beijing Olympics.

But I do enjoy an outraged rant about how the International Olympic Committee and its corporate partners have sold their souls (as if they had any, duh) by staging the games in a pollution-choked city where the government is apparently cracking down harder than ever on its political opponents.

Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post delivers. Hey, if she wants me to respond by boycotting NBC -- no problem. As long as a football game isn't on.