Imagine Stephon Marbury Times a Hundred

In a very old dance, the media and the blogs are knocking Stephon Marbury around for defending Michael Vick. You know the steps: Athlete does something dumb, other athlete issues an ill-considered comment, we all freak out and pile on.

Well, if you like that groove, China 2008 is going to feel like a coke-fueled rollerdisco orgy of self-righteousness:

In the past few months, Chinese bloggers have lapped up stories about Ai Dongmei, a marathoner who has wound up peddling clothes to survive and offered to sell her medals online.
...
Foreign Olympians, too, like American speed skating champion Joey Cheek, have launched plans to pressure athletes to use the stage to comment on China's relationship with Sudan. This campaign likely will force Chinese athletes, in press conferences, to answer questions about their views on Sudan, a subject they likely have spent little time studying.

That's right, Chinese bloggers and American bloggers parsing your every statement.

The former group will call you unpatriotic if you answer the question wrong (Unpatriotic? While the rest of your generation has been embracing Beijing-style metrosexualism and playing Mario Bros on their iPhones, you've been swimming laps in the same poorly chlorinated pool. You haven't had a life. You've had a state-sponsored Purgatory) and the American media/bloggers will call you a fascist stooge no matter what.

So August 2008 is going to suck eggs for these poor, talented bastards. Like Max Schmeling in 1938 egg sucking. And yeah, "eggs" are just a euphemism for testicles. Gonna suck, is what I'm trying to say.