Bob Costas Must Perish

Yes, I know Mr. Costas isn’t in charge of the programming over at NBC. However, since I need an object towards which I can vent my frustrations, and seeing how Bob is so idiotic that he warrants a good bashing, I’ll stick with blaming him. NBC is suffering from horrible Olympics ratings – and I can understand why. Their coverage is abysmal.

Like most American Gen-X’ers (oh, how I loathe my generation’s classification but ironically will rush to defend it against copy-cat attempts to label younger folks with titles such as, Generation Y, Z, etc.), I have been sucked in by the newest sport in the Winter Olympics – The Snowboard Cross. I think the Washington Post described it best by saying it resembles a “real life video game.” People fall, get hurt, speed down snowy hills and push one another. Truly a sport for the times.

So during this competitive feast of adrenaline, just before the semi-finals, NBC programmers thought it would be a nifty idea to switch gears and show another winter sport – Men’s Single Figure Skating. Yep, just as millions of young, heterosexual men all around the country were gathered around their television sets ready to see the finale of Olympics’ newest sport, they were all treated to a helping of gay men scampering around the ice wearing sequins (I had to have that term defined for me - basically, fruity sparkling things normally found on girls prom dresses), skimpy tunics, blouses and tights as they thrust their hips to showtunes. Man, talk about NBC not knowing their audience. I almost threw up.

For 30 minutes, I had to have my sexuality assaulted by young men skipping and “doing the splits” as my wife smiled with glee at the rich, disturbing irony with which America had just been presented. I had already used up my Tivo’s buffer on all of the multitudes of commercials shown during the games, so I was forced to wait through live TV and announcers saying, “wow, he’s really good… I’ve never seen a man do THAT…” Wrong.

When it finally ended, I had to watch Bob Costas talk about how wonderful everything was and how the US men’s figure skating team never seems to match the ability of the Russian team. Does he need the difference between American and European males spelled out to him? What an idiot. I was beside myself with loathing. So that, my friends, is why Bob Costas must perish.