Fox News goes all knee-jerk jingoism on America's Olympians

By Michael J.W. Stickings

No red, no white, no blue: Gabby Douglas might just be a terrorist.

You can't make this shit up. And, with Fox News on the job, you don't have to:

Gabby Douglas was the topic du jour for Olympic commentators throughout last week, but over the weekend, she became a centerpiece in another manufactured controversy at Fox News, America's top outlet for manufactured controversies. Douglas' pink leotard, Fox host Alisyn Camerota lamented, was emblematic of an Olympic "trend" (one that, Fox wants you to believe, is part of a liberal-left conspiracy to rid the world of red, white, and blue) of athletes wearing colors that don't appear on the American flag.

"Some folks have noticed that the American athletes' uniforms don't carry the stars and stripes look as much as they have in past years," Camerota complained, without any evidence of who "some folks" might be. "The famous flag-styled outfits worn in year's past replaced with yellow shirts, gray track suits, pink leotards." Radio host/Tea Partier David Webb later chimed in with a sad tome about how America has "lost over time that jingoistic feeling" because "a soft anti-American feeling that Americans can't show their exceptionalism."

Right, I've been watching a lot of the Olympics and I can report that those traitorous anti-American U.S. athletes wear neither red nor white nor blue, give the finger to the flag when they're standing on the podium, and refer to their flag, when they're not burning it, as the "Stars and Fucking Stripes," all because they hate their country and would be competing for al Qaeda if only it had its own Olympic team.

It's all true!

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On a more serious note, Gabby Douglas -- and I say this as someone who can't stand gymnastics as an Olympic sport (and certainly can't stand watching it) -- is an incredible athlete. Any self-respecting American should be happy she's an American competing for their country on the world's largest stage. She, nor any other Olympian, needs to be criticized by the fucking idiots who populate Fox News.

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Also, it's telling that "jingoism" has become a mark of pride on the right. Here's Wikipedia's description:

Jingoism is extreme patriotism in the form of aggressive foreign policy. In practice, it is a country's advocation of the use of threats or actual force against other countries in order to safeguard what it perceives as its national interests. Colloquially, it refers to excessive bias in judging one's own country as superior to others – an extreme type of nationalism.

The term originated in Britain, expressing a pugnacious attitude towards Russia in the 1870s. "Jingoism" did not enter the American vernacular until near the end of the 19th century. This nationalistic belligerence was intensified by the sinking of the battleship USS Maine in Havana harbour that led to the Spanish-American War of 1898.

Pride in one's country is one thing, and it's usually fine. Patriotism is also usually fine, though it's also, on occasion, "the last refuge of the scoundrel," particularly when it's "self-professed," which is what Samuel Johnson meant.

And jingoism? It's for bullying, unthinking morons with an extremist right-wing political agenda -- yes, like the fucking idiots who populate Fox News.