ESSAY : We Take Games Up Close and Personally

Today is the Fourth of July, a rockets-red-glare, bombs-bursting-in-air kind of day. From porches to picnics, the Stars and Stripes holds center stage.

In 15 days, we do it all again. Only this time, we call it the Olympics.

It has been 12 years since the Los Angeles Olympics, 12 years since we did this sort of unabashed, shameless, in-your-face-rest-of-the-world nationalism for a non-Gulf War kind of event. We are good at this. We are Americans, proud and loud.

For us, the Olympics are sugar for our diabetes. Any Olympics work well, but put them right here on home soil, on the fault lines of California or the red clay of Georgia, and watch us party. It’s “Animal House” without the togas.

And why not? We are the 500-pound gorilla of the Olympic movement. Our TV guys pay the bills. They’ve bought and booked this party through the year 2008 and they’re not even sure what city it will play after Sydney in 2000. Doesn’t matter. Juan Antonio Samaranch may be the head of the International Olympic Committee, but, for the foreseeable future, these are the Dick Ebersol Games.

Television has made the Olympics, and us, what we are today.

It has brought us, as far back as 1976 in Montreal, Bruce Jenner circling the track after his decathlon victory, nicely photogenic with American flag in hand while wife Chrystie, also nicely photogenic in a bright yellow T-shirt, worked her way through the crowd, celebrating. TV never missed a wave or a wink. Neither did the Wheaties people.

In ensuing years, TV has brought us Carl Lewis, finishing races and grabbing every flag he could find. Sometimes he waved them, sometimes he draped them. If they had a contest for Mr. Star Spangled, Carl would be a lock. If only they made red, white and blue pantyhose.

And then there is Bela Karolyi, the Romanian who coaches American female gymnasts and who attracts more cameras than Lady Di. When Bela bellows his trademark “Ya! Ya!” in joyous celebration for a successful maneuver by one of his performers, TV directors get goose bumpy, as does all of America. Bela then hugs his performer, all her aunts and uncles, all the people in the first six rows of the arena and five ushers. NBC and the Nielsen people quiver, simultaneously.

The Olympics on television take us so much further than the normal American sports telecast, where we get Michael Irvin and Dennis Rodman teaching our children new words. The Olympics give us evening after evening of emotional overload. They are 17 days of glory; also, 17 days of tears. They are the thrill of victory, and the agony of having a camera in your face while you are slobbering over defeat. We get it all in living color, sometimes even in freeze frame.

The Olympics are also a morality lesson for our youth. By watching the Olympics, they know the evils of Ben Johnson, and the unfair ways of Chinese swimmers and runners drinking worm juice, or East German swimmers popping steroids. They learn it is much better to elbow a smaller opponent from Angola in the face. This is the American way. Direct. To the point.

Indeed, in only 15 days, we will party hardy in front of our TV sets, root-root-rooting for the home team. Sports that, in non-Olympic years, would be on ESPN2 at 2:30 a.m., right after Australian rules football, will have us on the edge of our couches, feeling just one double-twist-with-a-tuck away from paradise.

From the dawn’s early light of that first day in Atlanta, it’ll be sparklers and cherry bombs. And television will be there for us, as well as the athletes, win or cry.