Women's Hockey Team Booz-Up
- Thread starter Ogu
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I know what hockey players smell like right after a game,
male or female, it's all just 'sweat' and 'dirt'.
You can't even handle an American expressing the opinion, in a single sentence, that it was not good sportsmanship. I see at least two posts by you needing to call me names for that alone. No one here honestly believes Canadians wouldn't be massing at the border to hurl names at the US if the Americans had done that celebration.
As to your suggestion below, had the American girls won I find it a little bit this side of inconceivable:
"My only problem with this scenario? they didn't have the silver and bronze medal teams out there celebrating games well played - maybe that will happen next time!"
Quite so, Ranchhand (incidentally, good to hear from you again after a long time), it will spark outrage among the Canadians. But then Americans will ask, what is the big deal, they won, they are entitled to celebrate.
The fact is, many people tolerate outrageous behavior from athletes, where they wouldn’t tolerate it from ordinary mortals. If anything it should be the other way round. Athletes should be held to a higher standard, not lower standard.
Nobody is demanding that personal behavior should go back to Victorian times, I have a very low opinion of Victorian morality myself.
However, I don’t think it is appropriate to smoke in public and convey the message to the teenagers all over Canada (and perhaps even outside Canada) that smoking is cool. When it comes to something as harmful, as pernicious as smoking, one must show utmost judgment, utmost caution.
If you must smoke, do it in private, not in public. Incidentally, how is this Victorian morality? Victorians were big on smoking of all kind. They used to have smoking parties in those days.
There is nothing Victorian about the disapproval of their behavior.
Absolutely - but there's one small hitch here- it wasn't in public, the public had all left the arena and it was closed to the public at the time. The only ones outside of the players and those involved with the program were reporters. I would concede that it wasn't the wisest thing that they did, BUT the severity of it has been blown out of all proportion. For conformation check White Owl's cigar sales a month from now and watch for a huge spike.
And what does this have to do with the hockey team making a spectacle of themselves? One can be proud of Canada's performance (including the performance of the hockey team) and at the same time condemn the behavior of the players.
They didn't make a spectacle of themselves, to be a spectacle, you have to have spectators and they had all left the building................remember?
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You certainly touched a nerve with your post, Ranchhand, it generated plenty of reaction, you ruffled plenty of feathers (you should be pleased, one of the reasons to post here is to get a reaction).
However, as I said before, if American team had done it, the Americans would have jumped to their defense. Rush Limbaugh and others would have had a field day with it, trashing Canada in the vilest possible manner for daring to question the behavior of Americans. It would have been the stereotype of the Ugly American all over again.
The small voice of Canadian bloggers would have been drowned by a much bigger voice of American bloggers. And that indeed is the problem. Unless and until we start holding athletes to the same standard as other people (or preferably to higher standards), athletes will continue believing that they are above the law, that sense of morality, propriety, ethics does not apply to them.
"Also watch the sales of cigarettes and watch a huge spike. "- I'll bet you $10 there is no spike in cigarette sales (within +/- 0.25%)
Or the case of reporters trying to make a story out of a non story.
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