Wave That Flag At The Olympics

17 May, 2004 by John Hawkins

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It is absolutely outrageous that US Olympic officials have told American athletes not to wave the flag at the Olympics. Here’s what US Olympic Committee consultant “Mike Moran had to say,

“What I am telling the athletes is, ‘Don’t run over and grab a flag and take it round the track with you.’ It’s not business as usual for American athletes. If a Kenyan or a Russian grabs their national flag and runs round the track or holds it high over their heads, it might not be viewed as confrontational. Where we are in the world right now, an American athlete doing that might be viewed in another manner.”

Don’t hold our flag high huh? Let me tell you about another time at the Olympic games when Americans weren’t supposed to hold their flags high. This is from “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Nazi Germany” and it describes what happened at the beginning of the 1936 Olympic games…

A huge bell announced the start of the parade of the athletes. As always it was a colorful event. Some details, however, were out of the ordinary. Passing below the fuhrer’s booth, the Austrian team gave the Nazi salute; the crowd cheered loudly. To the surprise of almost everyone, the Bulgarians goose-stepped by. The French gave a salute that looked like the Nazi one, although they claimed later that it was the raised Olympic salute. The British did not lift their eyes to the “Tribune of Honor” and got booed.

Last in the alphabetical list of the foreign teams was the Vereinigten Staaten, the United States. On passing below the booth, all the previous groups had lowered their national flags. The Americans refused to do so.”

Our Olympic athletes didn’t lower our flags for the Nazis and we certainly shouldn’t be lowering them now. Who cares if a bunch of anti-American swine in the stadium boo? Our athletes should wave our flag and if anyone doesn’t like it, they can to go straight to hell as far as I’m concerned.