Oh, Well

Well, everyone, time to offer up another sacrifice to the gods of American sanctimony.

We have a special place in the public consciousness for people like Lindsey Jacobellis. And if you find yourself there, God have mercy on your wretched soul.

Because we sure won't.

We Americans live through our heroes, who symbolize -- or who are expected to symbolize -- the image of our pre-eminence. We feed on their spirit. And if we have our way, we ultimately will consume it.

That is, unless we are turned away. And we really don't like that. Especially by one of our own.

Lindsey Jacobellis showboating away a sure gold medal in the women's snowboardcross race was the lasting image over this past weekend of Winter Olympics competition.

With a surely insurmountable lead, the 20-year-old soared through the air on her second-to-last jump with the finish line in plain sight. Caught up in the moment she'd waited four years for, she went for it -- the "backside method grab," flaring the board 60 degrees behind her to add an exclamation point to her resounding victory.






Snowboardcross is a provacative new addition to Olympic snowboard competition (which as a whole is full of carefree characters who could just as easily be playing Playstation as competing on the world's largest sporting stage).

Snowboardcross is something like NASCAR on snowboards. Four competitors share a small space, winding and jumping through a downhill course, bumping and out-scheming each other for position. Two competitors had already eaten it (one was carried off on a stretcher), and Jacobellis looked back before her second-to-last jump. She could feel the imminence of victory.

There's no denying ... the method air looked pretty sweet.

Until.









It's a move that she would land 99 times out of 100.

But she didn't land it, so she had to settle for silver -- and endure the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune.

The winner of the men's snowboardcross (whose girlfriend happens to be the Swiss snowboarder that luckily finished first before Jacobellis) shared with the viewing public that he had already performed the same moves in some of his early qualifying heats.

If she landed it, few would have even noticed she did it. For those who would notice, Jacobellis would have only added to the refreshingly brash and playful mythos of the snowboarding tribe.

This untamed group has said it's not about the medals. It's about personal accomplishment. And having fun. And whether the VISA endorsement Jacobellis signed on to gives you pause to actually believe in such an idealistic notion, for the most part it seems to be true (putting aside the Bode Miller rebel-without-a-cause sideshow).

Somehow, though, we have a difficult time accepting that.

There's something curious going on here. A dissonance. Somewhere we've lost ourselves.

We Americans are bold. We are winners. We are a society that has historically made itself comfortable with risk. It's part of what (for all our faults) makes this the greatest country on the planet.

Or at least we feel justified to think so.

It's no secret America is viewed worldwide as a nation of arrogance. In many ways, we are, sometimes destructively so. Yet, arrogance can be an inprecise descriptio. Arrogance or confidence?

There's nothing wrong with confidence, if you are willing to accept the consequence of what reveling in the spoils of risk might entail.

So what happens when the spirit of what represents us conflicts with our neurotic insecurity for quantifiable proof of our superiority?

It brings out the worst in us. We eat our own.

Lindsey Jacobellis, meet Bob Costas and the guantlet of the public court of deification.

Before she sat down by NBC's contrived fireside for an interview with Costas -- who throughout the Olympics has struggled to be relevant with a young audience, questioning snowboarders on the potential "babes" a gold medal might land them -- she had to watch what the rest of the country watched: an overwrought vignette opining on how this could be one of the biggest sports gaffes in American history.

(Nevermind that snowboardcrosss was sanctioned as an Olympic sport for the first time in this Olympics and that snowboarders have been routinely ridiculed for their unwillingness to appease the pharisees who bear the burden of proclaiming what is and isn't a sport).

The indignant tone of the narrator's voice echoed every reactionary, beer-gutted recliner-dweller who just can't understand why it can't be like it was in the good 'ole days, when athletes didn't have tattoos and didn't indulge in touchdown celebrations.

In the maelstrom immediately following the race, she tried to convince us that she was just steadying herself. When the tape told a different story, she was contrite. She was simply trying to avoid the mea culpa that the media -- and the masses addicted to vicarious validation -- so often bleed from their prey. And maybe VISA had something to do with it, too.

Give her credit for showing up. And for being polite. And for clearing the nasty air of indignation.

By simply asking her, "What were you thinking?," Costas got her to say she just got too caught up in the moment. She told him what she essentially told the rest of the worldwide media.

“I was having fun. Snowboarding is fun. I was ahead. I wanted to share my enthusiasm with the crowd. I messed up. Oh well, it happens.”

And with that, Jacobellis and her silver medal leave home for Vermont for a respite and probable knee surgery.

And here we stand, our pitchforks and torches in hand, with nothing to sacrifice.

Oh well, we've still got Ricky Williams.