Quadsville

    We are looking for any local connections to the evacuations under way in Louisiana as Hurricane Gustav approaches. Are you in touch with family members or have any other stories to share? Send along your ideas to newsroom@qctimes.com or to me at Quadsville. Thanks!

Hello, Quadsvillagers,

My first official U.S.-Austria Journalism Exchange Fellowship blog entry is up (with photos). Sorry, not from Vienna. I'm in D.C. for a few days of orientation. But check in with my blog frequently over the next several weeks. I'd love to hear from you all while I'm abroad.

Also, next week is the Democratic National Convention. Both Rep. Phil Hare and Rep. Bruce Braley are confirmed to blog. Times political reporter Ed Tibbetts will also be blogging and reporting from the DNC.

I'm recruiting RNC bloggers now. I'll keep you posted!

 

Every Saturday, I write a column on the Editorial Page summing up the discussion online at qctimes.com and quadsville.com. You can find the original here and join in the conversation. This is the column from Saturday, Aug. 16.

“If a 14-year-old can win gold, then good for her. It’s not like the Chinese girls are on steroids or anything. Sounds to me like other countries are just upset that they didn’t win.”

That was Keyboard Cowboy’s assessment of the latest Olympic flap. Suspicions were raised this week that at least one female Chinese gymnast was nowhere near 16, the minimum age to compete in the Olympics. Late last year, the Chinese government’s news agency, Xinhua, reported that gymnast He Kexin was 13, but now they say that was an error. All the team members’ passports give birth dates of 1992 or earlier. But ...

“China’s government is the one that sponsors the athletes and chooses them before the age of 3 to be taken from their parents and put into an athletic camp similar to a boot camp, where they only see their parents and family on holidays,” wrote Gotsense. “So if the government knows this, and they are also the ones issuing the botched passports and paper work,” well then the IOC’s got its work cut out for it.

This is the third instance of untruthiness from the Chinese in the week-old games. First there were the CG fireworks and the lip syncing girl during the opening ceremonies. Those two were not quite lies. There were real fireworks, but to give television viewers a crystal-clear picture, unobscured by smoke (or smog), the ones we saw were computer generated. And that’s fine if everyone was told that up front. But we weren’t.

And I could understand the lip syncing if it was to prevent a faulty microphone from spoiling the moment. But as Iaatty wrote, “I think the lip sync was upsetting to people because of the reason behind it. The real singer had crooked teeth, so the Chinese didn’t want anyone to see her.”

And now, their athletes, who are already trained through a very exploitive system, may not be legal competitors.

Some commenters felt these transgressions justified their boycotts of China and the Olympic Games. Redleg64 wrote, “We have refused to watch this junk. These games are a farce. Chinese propaganda machine is hard at work. Globalism is good for communists.”

KingTekno added, “Stop buying Chinese. It’s for the good of the nation. We’ve sold this country down the river economically, and the foolish, schoolyard divisiveness has destroyed us as any kind of world power as we all sit flapping our arms over the Russia/Georgia incident.”

As much as I wish I could just ignore all the political aspects of the Olympics and enjoy some mesmerizing athletic competition, I can’t stomach it. I’ve caught a few minutes of programming on the TV at work, but I haven’t turned on my set. When countries are so desperate to win and to look good on the national stage that they will do anything to be No. 1, it ruins the spirit of sportsmanship for me.

The games were spoiled for Itchy Brother, too. “This is just another black eye for sport. Doping, drugging, lying, cheating and all the other nonsense that goes on in the world of sport has taken away, for me, the enjoyment of watching the Olympics and many other sporting events. It’s all about winning and the money, baby. Forget doing your best, ’cause that ain’t good enough.”

Congratulations to Chinese gymnast He Kexin and her teammates. I can’t blame them for busting their butts to represent their country. Keyboard Cowboy’s right: It’s impressive for an athlete at any age to perform that well.

But I can’t help but feel sorry for He, too, for the kind of life she must have, and for the thousands, perhaps millions, of people exploited in preparation for the games or silenced to maintain China’s image.

The Beijing Olympic Games’ slogan, “One World, One Dream,” emphasizes harmony. But at what point is humanity sacrificed in the name of perfection and the illusion of peace and order? Without a little discord, harmony is meaningless.

Melissa Coulter writes on the online community at quadsville.com. Contact her at (563) 383-2243 or at mcoulter@qctimes.com.

Please welcome Rep. Phil Hare to Quadsville and check out his post on his trip to Iraq. Hare will be blogging from the Democratic National Convention, too, so keep an eye on his profile.

Political reporter Ed Tibbetts will also be blogging from the DNC on Quadsville and on qctimes.com/blogs. There may be a few more DNC bloggers to announce by the end of the week.

Anyone else out there going to the DNC? How about the RNC? Or Ron Paul's simultaneous shindig?

In other high-tech political news, Sen. Barack Obama's campaign announced today that it will send supporters and other interested folks a text or email with his VP pick the moment he makes a decision. This was announced via Twitter and e-mail today (and this AP story).

I found and started following Obama on Twitter and got the txt msg VP details. I looked for John McCain on Twitter, too, to follow him, but I only found unofficial accounts and PACs. Anybody know if the McCain camp is tweeting? 

 

 

I see Adam Peters is watching the Olympics. Anyone else out there glued to their screen? Are you watching it on TV - cable or NBC? Or are you surfing for coverage on the Web?

I checked out a slideshow of the opening ceremonies Friday morning at derstandard.at (my host paper in Austria). It was a great preview of Friday night's broadcast.

I watched with friends and our host had even prepared Olympic-themed snacks. There was a pool of blue Jello with licorice rope lanes and swimming Teddy Grahams, plus Olympic ring colored chocolate-pretzel-M&M treats and gold medals (chocolate coins).

Don't forget you can also keep up with the Olympics on Cameron Coker's blog, Beijing Beat.

What is your favorite event? 

Good morning, Quadsvillagers...

Renko suggested this post by zenmedic as another warm fuzzy story worth reading on Quadsville. It is definitely moving.

Teenager also responded to the original warm fuzzy post about the picture Brandon Holtam drew depicting the things that are important to him that he wanted to share. She even drew her own picture. Check it out.

There's a great discussion happening on a letter to the editor at qctimes.com. Shannon Strombeck's letter on the high school dropout age has a couple dozen comments right now. Good reading. Join in the discussion.