It's amateur hour at the Olympics
Here's the state of play as the 20th Winter Olympics stumble into the home stretch: spoiled, selfish athletes turning in subpar performances; a panoply of fake ''sports" inserted into the schedule to momentarily distract the Grand Theft Auto crowd from killing off more pixelated jurors. (Your 12-year-old knows what I'm talking about.)
And television ratings so low a rattlesnake could slither underneath them with a top hat on.
Let the recriminations begin!
In the United States, it's hard to separate the nominal business of the Olympics -- sports -- from what seems to be the real business of the Olympics: selling. The nominal business is proceeding quite nicely, if you are rooting for Norway or Austria. The US team is another story. If you factor out the ludicrous nouveaux sports created expressly for American juvenile delinquents -- aerial freestyle skiing and snowboard cross are fine examples -- our medal count matches up quite nicely with . . . Switzerland's.
The business of selling Chevy SUVs and
New Hampshire's own Bode Miller, launched into celebri-space by ''60 Minutes" and a cover story in The New York Times sports magazine, has come crashing down to earth with a not-too-plausible cover story of his own: Who cares about medals? Who cares about fame? For that matter, who cares about being in shape for the Olympics, and who cares about living with your teammates? Miller has been holing up in a 32-foot RV outfitted with a king-size bed and a plasma-screen TV for playing his favorite video games. Grand Theft Auto, anyone?
The Americans can't win for losing, or vice versa. The story of speed skater Shani Davis, the first African-American to win an individual gold medal at a winter Olympics, graced many a Page One. (He won a second, silver medal yesterday.) Davis was raised by his mother in Chicago and learned to skate at the roller rink, not at some tony suburban ice palace.
But Davis has become a divisive figure, yet another American Olympic pratfall. Accused of dodging a team skating event in order to save energy for his gold-medal performance in the 1,000-meter race, Davis lashed out: ''I'm not a team player. People do what's best for them. I had the opportunity to win the 1,000 meters, and I was focused on that."
While Miller's website has maintained radio silence on his Torino disappointments, Davis's has been broadcasting loud and clear. Here is his ''Message to the Media": ''Shani is in Torino to skate period. I guess most of the media is just too shallow or maybe SELFISH to realize that the message is there is NO message. Shani just wants to skate fast. And if Shani wants to celebrate, it certainly will not be with anyone from the media."
Davis has also posted a separate ''Message to black people": ''NBC only cares about its ratings period. Don't get angry at their or other's ignorance. As long as we love each other and take care of our children, then their persistent ignorance becomes just another minor irritant."
But enough about them, Alex. How has the Olympics been for you?
Unfortunately, I have missed a lot. I didn't see our heroic men's hockey victories over Kazakhstan and, well, no one else. Likewise, I missed the women's hockey team's lackluster outings; how many countries in the world play women's ice hockey, anyway?
But I did see ice dancing, some freestyle skiing, and of course curling, the sport that NBC anchorthing Brian Williams calls ''chess on ice." As I watched the Canadian team broom, brush, scheme (''This is the dreaded out-turn," a commentator noted), and curl its way to a soporific 6-3 win over the Americans, my mind turned to the video purveyor of last resort: I wonder what's on public television?
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com. 
