White Male Privilege Is Why We Laugh At Lochte And Vilify Douglas

Darn it. A strong-ish tornado is eating Grand Rapids (or is about to), and my Olympics coverage is being preempted.

I hope the big IMAX survives.

Uh Oh.....

If I don't post for awhile, I might be without power for an extended period. Or I might be swept off to the Land of Oz with Dorthy and Toto.

I've never seen/heard a tornado in person. Best case, it comes close enough for me to observe but not close enough to do harm.

I don't see anything right now. Just funky sky that is both heavy overcast and daylight at the same time, with a steady rain.

They just downgraded it to a thunderstorm warning. Guess I won't get to see a tornado in person. I was just starting to hope I'd see one.

And now the sky is lightening.

But my power is blinking.....

I've seen lightning before. I already know what it looks like. What I wanted was to see that funnel cloud (without sustaining damage to my property of course).

I suppose the upside is that I avoided property damage. It would have been cool to see a funnel cloud though.

I hope the big IMAX in Grand Rapids is OK. I don't have a good sense of the damage to the city yet. So far there are just a few pictures of trees snapped off at the base of the trunk. I generally don't have much use for cities, but I'd really hate to lose that IMAX.

A lot of people don't want your bio-hazard sprayed on their lawns or walls because its not very nice of you.

This is useful, and right away brings up what I was saying Gabby said about the anthem and her military family.. and then talks of a social media turnaround.. Me, I like her a lot, and have done back to 2012.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/20/why-we-love-gabby-douglas.html

Bentz statement points to Lochte as instigator

http://www.georgiadogs.com/sports/c-swim/spec-rel/081916aac.html


"After attending an event with several swimmers from different nations, I left in a taxicab along with U.S. swimmers Jack Conger, Jimmy Feigen and Ryan Lochte around 6 a.m. On the way back to the Olympic Village, we pulled into a convenience store to use the restroom. There was no restroom inside, so we foolishly relieved ourselves on the backside of the building behind some bushes. There was a locked door out back and I did not witness anyone breaking it open. I am unsure why, but while we were in that area, Ryan pulled to the ground a framed metal advertisement that was loosely anchored to the brick wall. I then suggested to everyone that we needed to leave the area and we returned to the taxi.

"Two men, whom I believe to have been security guards, then instructed us to exit the vehicle. No guns were drawn during this exchange, but we did see a gun tucked into one of the guard's waistband. As Jimmy and Jack were walking away from the vehicle, the first security guard held up a badge to me and drew his handgun. I yelled to them to come back toward us and they complied. Then the second guard drew his weapon and both guards pointed their guns at us and yelled at us to sit on a nearby sidewalk.

"Again, I cannot speak to his actions, but Ryan stood up and began to yell at the guards. After Jack and I both tugged at him in an attempt to get him to sit back down, Ryan and the security guards had a heated verbal exchange, but no physical contact was made.

"A man that I believe to be a customer approached us and offered to help as he spoke both English and Portuguese. Understandably, we were frightened and confused during this time. Through the interpreter, one of the guards said that we needed to pay them in order to leave. I gave them what I had in my wallet, which was a $20 bill, and Jimmy gave them 100 Reals, which is about $50 in total. They lowered the guns and I used hand gestures to ask if it was okay to leave and they said yes. We walked about a block down the street and hailed another taxi to return to the Village.

No...just the fact I heard the opposite in these two particular situations.

Ryan Lochte: an Olympic tale of gold medals and white privilege


Marina Hyde
Friday 19 August 2016 12.38 EDT

So, in Ryan Lochte the International Olympic Committee finally has its poster boy. Nothing says “IOC, bitch!” like landing in a host city, extracting personal glory from it, partying it up and then leaving the place more broken and out of pocket than you found it. It’s such an IOC move, dude. You have your fun, you get wrecked, you piss on a gas station, you break its bathroom door, you claim to have been robbed, you blame a bunch of stuff on the crappy Brazilians.

That Lochte flew out of Brazil days before his story about being jumped at a Rio petrol station by assailants disguised as police officers unravelled – and thus can’t really be touched, even by irate Brazilian authorities, for the mess he left behind – is somehow even more perfect. Oh dear, you have a broken bathroom door? You have a bunch of white elephant stadiums no one wanted? I’m definitely giving a major F about this back in the first world!

So far, so Lausanne. The politics of the tall tale Lochte and his swim team bros spun the media about being robbed in Brazil, to disguise their drunken criminal damage, is almost too obvious to state. An economically struggling city, whose people made it vocally clear the Olympics were unwelcome, has spent much of its hosting period being dug at for failing to provide the five-star international tourist experience and immaculate security that today’s modern Olympic tourist demands.

In this sensitive climate, Lochte & Co claiming to have been robbed by gun-toting pretend police officers underscores the idea the host city is a semi-lawless backwater where no one is safe. Even the apology he posted today is so extravagantly preposterous it can only have been written as a dare. “It is traumatic to be out late with your friends in a foreign country,” quoth Lochte of his trauma, “with a language barrier, and have a stranger point a gun at you and demand money to let you leave.” Which is one way of describing the security guard telling them to pay for their vandalism.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/19/ryan-lochte-olympic-tale-gold-medals-white-privilege-rio

First world countries have a ready solution for that sort of situation: They provide bathrooms for people who need to pee.

Bio-hazard is a bit of an exaggeration. I've heard that soldiers who are short of medical supplies have used fresh urine to disinfect wounds.

If the security guard is going to babble foreign gibberish instead of speaking proper English, then he shouldn't expect English-speaking people to understand what is going on when he points a gun at them and takes their money.

Most certainly the USA should invade Brasil and first change the national language there from Portuguese to American English!

I mean, as someone who doesn't follow the Olympics at all (and sports in general barely, only world and Euro cups football get my attention), the way I found out about the Lochte story was through Twitter. Suddenly, it was. All. Over. Twitter. There were three different Lochte-related hashtags in the top 10 (I think it is) at the same time. All of them filled with uproar against the guy (I clicked specifically to figure out what the Hell was going on to spark three simultaneous trending hashtags). That must have been when the story broke I guess.

Hell, just like I don't really read any sports-related stories in the news, I don't follow anyone sports-related at all - and still this Lochte story was all in my feed, with people who normally never or rarely tweet about sports figures being angry about him and mocking him and criticizing the media coverage and everything.

Meanwhile, I hadn't even heard about the Douglas story til I read this thread! That one didn't show up on my Twitter feed at all, and if it had trending hashtags I didn't notice them.

So your claims about who or what have been "all over" social media don't ring true to me at all - and I spend way too much time on social media.

What makes you think Brazil isn't on Donald tRump's short nuke list already, Walter?

Ryan Lochte Admits He ‘Over-Exaggerated’ Rio Robbery Story
Source: Huff Post

WASHINGTON ― Ryan Lochte on Saturday said he exaggerated a story about being robbed at gunpoint in Rio de Janeiro, speaking in his first televised interview since large portions of his initial account were debunked.

“I over-exaggerated that story and if I never did that we wouldn’t be in this mess,” a newly brown-haired Lochte told Matt Lauer, a co-anchor of NBC’s “Today Show.” “It was my immature behavior.”

Excerpts of the interview aired during “NBC Nightly News” on Saturday evening and then later in the evening during the network’s Olympics coverage, but the full interview will appear Monday morning on the “Today Show.”

In a longer excerpt of the Lauer interview released later on Saturday evening, Lochte apologized profusely to the three swimmers out with him that night for returning to the United States and leaving them to face the consequences for his actions


Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ryan-lochte-robbery-exaggerated_us_57b8cf31e4b03d513688d013?section=&&

Poor guy lost a lot of money from his stupid behavior.

He is not poor.

When I say poor guy, I'm not talking about money.

I know that. Have you read much about him? He is not very well liked, long before this episode. I'm not going to chase links.

Yeah, poor guy my ass. Privileged overage frat boy - 32 years old and can't conduct himself like an adult without supervision. I hope they make him stand in front of high school and college swim teams and tell the story of what really happened that night - being sure to include the vandalism, pissing on walls, and general drunken disorderliness. And how he couldn't own what he did so he had to lie about being robbed at gunpoint.