Now that the Olympics have concluded I believe that it is time for us to take a step back from the excitement of watching the world’s best athletes compete and analyze its role in a broader social context.
On August 22, 2016 Bill O’Reilly on the O’Reilly factor began his show by reciting a Talking Points memo which stoked the fires of nationalism and American exceptionalism. He said that “The games demonstrated that this country remains a superpower not only in military matters but also in athletics.” He continued on, saying that “a pool is a pool, a track is a track. It doesn't matter how much money a country has, it doesn't matter what the social system is. Kenya, for example, dominates long-distance running and that's a very poor place.” Ignoring the fact that the amount of funding put into sports programs in certain countries can certainly affect performance (and it is easier to have train for events like running because they require little equipment) this statement has some worrying implications.
The first major oversight is that O’Reilly and Talking Points are looking at the overall medal count this Olympics. By this metric the United States clearly won with its 121 medals, 54 more than were won by second-place Great Britain. However, if O’Reilly wanted to see how exceptional these athletes were surely he would want to know the amount of medals each country won per capita to see which countries have a higher percentage of Olympic victors versus their population.
By this metric, the United States falls to a distant 43rd place in this summer’s Olympics, with one medal per 2.656 million people. In first place is Grenada, which won a single medal but has a population of 106,825. Other top spots are occupied by countries that are slightly larger, but still tiny compared to the United States.
Even if we exclude these smaller countries due to too small of sample size, Australia, a country of 24 million, still has one medal per 820,000 people and Great Britain, with a population of 65 million, has one medal per 972,000 people. But where is the discussion of British and Australian exceptionalism (at least in American news media)? It doesn’t exist.
America always dominates the total medal count, for a variety of reasons. It has a gigantic population, countries with higher GDPs tend to do better, it dominates certain events (like swimming), it often sets financial incentives for athletes to win gold, and a plethora of other reasons. However, none of this really makes America “better” than any other nation in athletics, as O’Reilly seems to claim, and we are worse than 42 on a per capita medal count.
Pundits will take any excuse to say that America is the greatest country on Earth, and unfortunately the Olympics makes that so extremely easy. It is a competition wherein countries are naturally paired against one another, and the “winner” is determined by the total medal count. American coverage solely focusses on American athletes, their stories and their victories, while it often ignores these in competitor’s from other nations (unless they are a household name like Usain Bolt). It is remarkably easy to prop up your country and people naturally want to root for the culture into which they were born. As a viewer of the Olympics myself, it is one of the few times where I associate with the “American” identity in an active, participatory role.
What is wrong with the concept of American exceptionalism? While nothing is inherently wrong with it. There is nothing wrong with believing that the United States is better than other countries, as long as we simultaneously recognize that this does not mean that the United States is exempt from the same international law and moral standards to which other countries are held accountable. It makes it possible for us to justify the drone bombing of thousands of innocent Arabs, or not even think about the moral ramifications of such an action, because we are America and we are the best country with the best culture.
This line of thought becomes more possible with Olympic coverage in the O’Reilly vein, because he does present America as being the dominant culture. As he puts it we are a “superpower,” and why question the actions of the cultural superpower.
I love my country for the opportunities which I have found within it and the services it has provided me. I am not trying to question the global status of America in any regard, but it is important to look at how this rhetoric can be spun. This concept of athletic superiority is simply a veiled claim of cultural superiority, and that is a dangerous road to go down.
