| 26 February 2010
Congrats Canada! Your women's Olympic Hockey team won! And the reaction from the IOC: break out the bright lights and the rubber hoses. Because that's what the IOC does when young people have fun, they investigate.
The International Olympic Committee will investigate the actions of Canadian women's hockey players who celebrated their gold medal victory Thursday night by swigging beer and smoking cigars on the ice in Vancouver.
A number of players, including 18-year-old superstar Marie-Philip Poulin, were drinking alcohol on the ice following the team's 2-0 defeat of the United States. (The legal drinking age in British Columbia is 19.) Players lingered for more than 70 minutes after the awards ceremony reveling in the arena, which was empty except for media and arena staff. (Click here to view a slideshow of the celebration.)
Break me a freakin' give, people. Seriously. If you want staid reverential victory celebrations, why on earth are you inviting kids to participate. Kids are exuberant. They are brash. Sometimes they offend their elders. That's their freaking job, you morons.
I'm on principle opposed to drinking ages, because they are basically an arbitrary restriction on personal liberty. I've known plenty of twentysomethings who were not mature enough to drink responsibly. Picking 21, or in British Columbia's case, 19, is entirely arbitrary. There's no basis other than a preference of doltish adults wanting to make sure kids are old enough to drink.
The problem is that with the young lady in question, Marie-Philip Poulin, her dedication to hard work, perseverance and honing her talent at hockey proves unequivocally that she possesses the maturity to consume a beer or six in celebratory excess without civilization crumbling.
The problem is more wide reaching though. Snowboarder Scotty Lago got (unofficially) banished from the games because he was exuberant in celebrating his bronze medal, and the Sauronic eye of TMZ - always watching, watching - caught a few pics of the celebration.
The Scott Lago 'racy pictures' are relatively unremarkable and look much like the photos that would be taken at any average college student's dorm party. While we don't think the pics are that racy they are still rather inappropriate for a forewarned Olympic participant. [emphasis in original - JT]
[...]
Distasteful? Yes. But while many of us have seen worse from teeny bopper Miley Cyrus' cell phone, Scotty's behavior is still considered unacceptable, at least for an Olympic athlete.
Unacceptable behavior from a snowboarder, because he reveled in his accomplishment. The pictures are inappropriate, deems the media that has no issues reprinting the pictures to justify their clucking and tut-tutting. And yes they're distasteful, so very distasteful. Have you seen, them? Aren't they distasteful?
Bunch of hypocrites. Scotty Lago is a 22-year old snowboarder. Snowboarding is less a sport than it is a good time. And that the Olympics want to seem hip by including snowboarding, they need to accept and acknowledge that with that comes a youth culture that's fond of partying. Young folks frequently have no issue with conduct that the hypocrite above calls an "average college student's dorm party." Primarily because they have more connection with those kind of events, because they are age-appropriate endeavors. Does no one in the mainstream media get the incongruity celebrating the accomplishments of young kids and then expecting them to behave like staid, boring adults?
On that score, the answer is no, they don't get it. Unsurprisingly, Pos has some explanation:
That’s not to say that [Lindsey] Jacobellis crashing while trying The Method was not stupid. Sure, it was plenty stupid. But it seems to me that it was stupid in the innocent way that a kid who hangs upside down from a branch and falls out of a tree is stupid. She was feeling the moment. She wanted to give everyone a thrill. Whatever the case, this wasn’t an American Tragedy, and it did not reflect anything more than a 20-year-old kid showing off for the crowd, just like she had her whole life.
In any case, as the story goes, she did not get redemption this Olympics. She bumped a gate during the semifinal of the snowboardcross Tuesday, and this disqualified her. She did not win a medal of any kind. Alas, redemption would not be hers. So it says in the papers and on the Internet. Of course, Jacobellis is a two-time world champion in this sport. She is not only the most famous snowboardcross woman on earth, there really isn’t a second place. She does commercials. There are 10 different companies sponsoring her. She has, in her own words, raised the level of her sport.
And, on the last jump of her Olympic race in Vancouver, Jacobellis — who knew that she would not win a medal — reached down and grabbed the board with TWO hands. I guess they call this trickier move the Truckdriver. Also one word. Kids today. They’re too busy having fun to … not have fun.
In one regard, though, the Olympic planners have no problem acknowledging that young athletes will be young athletes. HT-Slanch on that last story.
In conclusion, the IOC can kiss Lago's medal and give us all a break.
Cross posted at the Olympic Hockey Blog
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