Media Gossip Always Trumps Africa News

If I were a Chinese official hoping for a minimum of organized Darfur-inspired protest, I'd thank God for every random nutjob who grabbed a microphone with delusions of grandeur.

Enter Hu Ziwei, an Olympic television commentator and husband of another Chinese broadcaster. Hu grabbed the spotlight at a recent event to introduce a Chinse ping-pong champ and went nutso:

Hu: Today is a special day for The Olympic Channel, and it's a special day for Mr. Zhang Bin, and for me, it's a special day too. Because just two hours ago, I found out that besides me, Mr. Zhang Bin has been maintaining an improper relationship with another woman.

This has got everything people like to read about so they don't have to read about foreign affiars: sex, media, sexy media, and an arbitrary treasonous declaration that "We're so far from being a great country." Something like this would keep the American blogosphere humming along for a week.

Via Imagethief.

You Can Hear Them Clang When Abby Wambach Walks By

She's the leader of the U.S. team, the one cameras and the tape recorders are all crowded around. And yet, right before the team goes abroad, at a time when they'll desperately need their focus, she's got the stones to go and raise a scatstorm like this:

She likes to talk about more substantive topics, like famine, HIV and genocide in Africa. Even her T-shirt collection has taken on a more serious tone. In the team handbook the U.S. put out before its trip to China, Wambach is pictured with one that says SAVE DARFUR.

Wait, there was neither shit, nor fan? She's actually still playing? And still in Nike commercials? And Nike still sells Wambach gear? She has not, to date, been scrubbed from the dread company's records? She hasn't been stuffed into a bag and buried under the Great Wall?

Wow. Athlete speaks out, the turning of the world continues. I bet you could knock a Cleveland Cavalier over with a feather right about now.

China's Illicit Steroid Industry Has No Head

But a lean, mean body. So says The Old Gray Lady:

The operation revealed a much wider, more diffuse commerce in performance-enhancing drugs than previously known, with a latticework of bathroom and basement manufacturers and distributors. That contrasted with the more centralized drug network from past years that tapped into established pharmaceutical pipelines.

A network of Internet-based chemical wholesalers, anonymous e-mail services and password-protected chat rooms fueled the trade, federal and state officials said.

“There is no kingpin here,” said Steve Robertson, a spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration in Washington. “We’re going after individual distribution cells. There’s no godfather of steroids.”

This bullet train goes straight from Beijing to the guys on Long Island who shave their backs.

(Pic via tBoH)

Delightfully Condescending Olympics-Related Comment of The Week

Why is President Bush going to the 2008 Olympics?

Mr. Bush’s deputy press secretary, Dana Perino, said the president was going to the Games as a sports fan, not to make any political statement. But she said the president did raise human rights and religious freedom “in a forceful way” during his private meeting with Mr. Hu.
...

“The bottom line is he just loves sports, and I’m sure he wants to go, like any other guy, because it’s going to be exciting,” Mr. Green said. “I think he’s going to watch.”

One pictures Dana patting a reporter on his fedora'd hit while speaking these words.
Literally, one. Me. I see guys in knit wool fedoras.

Hef and the Future of Sports Blogging

When I read Playboy editor Chris Napolitano's interview in the Times where he talked about opening a Playboy club in Macao, that was enough. I don't care if Macao is going to be three times as big as Vegas. China's freaking cliche at this point, and the world desperately needs Hef's empire to stay focused on content.

Ever since my boss created FanHouse (one year ago today) on AOL, other companies (most notably ESPN) have begun pulling sportsbloggers inside their sites. In the best cases, the corporations haven't messed with the bloggers' voices.

But one thing about sports blogging that most mass media companies doesn't want to touch is the gratuitous boobies one finds all over MJD's Trim tag or Saint Andrew's Net on With Leather or anything on Our Book of Scrap. One exception to that trend is Playboy:

With the decline of the newsstand, we’re exploring ways to pump up distribution online (see above), and we’re building up our college marketing. And I don’t see any other mass publication addressing trends in sexuality or the falling of taboos better than Playboy, do you?

Hell if I know, I read blogs all day. But the interesting thing about the more lad mag-ish end of the sports blogosphere is that it perfectly lives up the cliche that people read it for the articles. The boobs really are just wallpaper. I doubt anyone goes to visits any of the blogs above if they don't enjoy the writers greatly.

At some point, the online arm of Maxim or Playboy or some outfit is going to realize just how ideal the boob-heavy end of the sportsblogging pool is for them. You take the basic editorial mix that independent bloggers have developed, you give those bloggers photo rights to your bottomless supply of barely-to-fully nude women, and then you feature them on your home page.

And like blammo, you've got a web property that men will look at when their wives are around. Which is a big step in many households, I'd bet.

Getting Ink for the "Genocide Olympics": Blame Hollwood

Daniel Large is the author of a report on how China might be backing off of support to Sudan in the run-up to the Olympics. And he seems to know that, even if Hollywood basically agrees with you on everything, you gotta bash Hollywood to get noticed:

"While Hollywood was quick to claim credit for China's apparent change of tack on Darfur, I think we should remember that signs of change were visible before the so-called 'Genocide Olympics Campaign' started in earnest," said Large. "So I think we should set these issues in context and we should be wary of having a short time frame in praising progress or success or failure."

Large is from the Small Arms Survey, an excellent Geneva-based research outfit which I've had the pleasure of speaking with before and which may be frustrated that the news out of Darfur isn't smarter or more plentiful. All of which would be understandable.

But. I don't know who this "Hollywood" Large speaks of is, but he doesn't need to worry. No one of note is ever going to allow "Hollywood" to claim credit for anything in the international arena, certainly not for the minimal moves toward opposing genocide that China has made in the past few months.

In all likelihood, the genocide will keep right on going, the Olympics will go off without a hitch, and no one at the Small Arms Survey or in the stable of talent at MGM will have reason to wear any "We Stopped the Genocide" party hats.

But if he's trying to get noticed by the media, Large has a decent strategy.

I mean, the Cavs' Ira Newble can light flames of protest in Chad with Mia Farrow all he wants. Unless he disses Farrow publicly and hysterically, calling her a limousine liberal who does more harm than good, I doubt any American talking heads are going to invite him on the air to talk about what he's seen.

Or unless he calls out teammate LeBron on those Mandarin lessons. You know he's got to be weighing that option while he's touring Chad and Rwanda.

Everyone Pile on the Head-Up-Your-Ass Wagon

Looks like Shaq is playing (poorly) in Beijing, and Cal Ripken is on his way right right behind him:

The former Orioles superstar said yesterday that he didn't accept the unpaid post to make a political statement but rather to work with children from other nations on baseball.
...
Bill Whalen, a research fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, said Ripken probably feels comfortable with Bush because he senses that the president "is a baseball man."

"But I don't think Cal Ripken has any political bones in his body," Whalen said.

Including a spine, no doubt. Not that he or Shaq would know what to do with it. It was LSU grad O'Neal who got weirded weirded out by a Spike Lee Joint and used it as an excuse to wonder aloud if Post-Katrina New Orleans could handle an All-Star Game.

Same thing here: If Cal doesn't know that playing photo op with a bunch of Chinese kids a year before the Beijing Olympics is a political act, or if he doesn't care what Condoleeza Rice's calculus is in this whole thing, then that's no less embarrassing than Shaq telling the press he wants to buy Yao Ming some rims.

One Year Until Ixnay on the Arfur Day!

The NYT's George Vecsey is just crazy about Chinese ... Olympic architecture:

Yet there is a tremendous upside to these Games: the exposure to modern China, including the Olympic architecture. Exactly one year from today, there will be four swimming finals in Beijing’s National Aquatics Center, nearly finished and already nicknamed the Water Cube because it looks like a square of sparkling water, instantly frozen, bubbles and all.

Next door is the main Olympic stadium, glowing a bright red and nicknamed the Bird’s Nest because of the steel twig-like prongs woven together. “To promote traditional feng shui balance between fire and water, the venues were placed side by side,” wrote John Powers of The Boston Globe, who recently visited Beijing.

China is near.

That chill up your spine came from someone inexplicable trying to write like Tom Friedman. Or the screenwriter of Highlander.

Vecsey goes on to absolutely wonder at the fact that China seems to have ... yuppies!* Why this is noteworthy, I still can't figure out.

Nor can I figure why, with all the issues surrounding the rise of China, Vecsey decides to deconstruct Olympic architecture like it's the Slusho viral marketing campaign. But in addition to the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube he could have mentioned:

1. The genocide that gets bankrolled by China's do-what-ya-like capitalism.
2. If that's too out there, man, here's a slam dunk: All those Mattel toys that were covered with lead. And the Chinese head of the company who committed suicide after the news about the lead hit. Maybe Vecsey should focus on the feng shui between prominent embarrassments to the country and the corpses that seem to follow. What's going to happen to the Chinese environmental bigwigs when the summer of 2008 rolls around and the air in Beijing still sucks? (Hint: Odds seem decent that they'll die.)
   

*Note to Vecsey: Every country has yuppie elites. Long before I saw any American idiots wearing those Bluetooth hands-free earbuds, I saw Ghanaian idiots** wearing them. They were sitting on the patio next to Busy Internet, overlooking the open sewer and the highway where some poor sap was pulling a cart clearly built for a beast of burden. The open sewer was a better indicator than the earbuds.

**Yeah, Ghana's better off than many. But point stands: Every country has a First Class section.

Of Sports Heroes and Filthy Lucre

Just before the weekend, Darren Rovell ran an interview with a Nike bigwig who talked about what China means to his company:

Denson: The Olympics are a great point in time and the Beijing Olympics are going to transcend the world of sport. They will become a monumental event throughout the world.

DR: I can't believe how big 2004 gold medal hurdler Liu Xiang is in this country...

Denson: When I think of Liu Xiang, I think of Michael Jordan in the mid 80s, I think of what Tiger Woods and Lebron James mean to Nike in the United States or what Ronaldinho in Europe and in the world of football (soccer).

The bolding of Denson's pandering to Chinese nationalism and his invocation of He Who Came First are mine. Because I didn't want you to have to read a lot of baloney about some foreign country, and because I want to stress that Nike is probably going to chastise the Chinese government when Darfur freezes over.

So, let's put this issue to bed: Yes, LeBron's signature on Ira Newble's open letter to China would indeed have been a "slam dunk." As, in a cheap easy way to score points without any repercussions. Neither "China" (businessmen, politicians, fans) nor Nike were going to slap LBJ down for it.

But then, as Charles P. Pierce noted, athletes don't really speak out about these things anymore. The strike Jesus Christ poses, but they sure don't open their mouths and say anything interesting. "Wacky" is pretty much the best you can hope for from them anymore.

In the same article: The brilliant CEO of Li-Ning, China's biggest domestic shoe company, thinks he has an advantage because "we know how to make shoes that are comfortable for the Chinese population." If he really thinks selling shoes is about comfort, then I can't help but think the Swoosh will swallow the rest of China's shoebuying demographic by about 2015.