How dare they show love of country!
Don’t chant “U.S.A.!” — Salon
Like so many Americans, I’ve been periodically tuning in to the Olympic Games. I’m not a serious sports enthusiast, but I pay casual attention — and when I do, I, like you, instantly scan the screen for the American flag icon among the competitors so that I know which athlete to cheer on. This, no doubt, is one of the appealing qualities of the Olympics. In a world of “asymmetrical” threats and shifting geopolitics, Olympic fandom is a haven for the simpleton in all of us. That Old Glory icon next to an athlete’s name distills the games into the good-versus-bad terms that are so elusive in the real world.
And yet, as I’ve grown older, I find my “U.S.A.!”-chanting reflex increasingly interrupted by pangs of discomfort, and not because I’m ashamed of our country or our Olympians, but because the relationship between American nationalism and the Olympics has been slowly infused with a different — and politicized — meaning. In short, chanting the initials of our nation seems less like it did in 1984 than it has since 1992.
Those two Summer Games were the formative events of my — and so many others’ — Olympic fan psyche.
The former, held in Los Angeles, was a Cold War spectacle of hyper-patriotism deliberately orchestrated to give the big middle finger to the boycotting Soviets and their allies. As ESPN’s Michael Weinreb recounted, “Spectators quite literally wrapped themselves in the flag” and “chants of ‘U.S.A.!’ became so jarring for the foreigners present that IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch wrote a letter complaining about ABC’s unabashedly patriotic coverage of the games.”