Word: glamourizer
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...Athletic glamour and grandeur are often in the eye of local beholders. To U.S. viewers, no amount of informative programming will make the luge, bobsled and . Nordic combined more than curiosity-shop events -- a job only American medals would do. But fans in other countries had cause to rejoice in some non-prime- time, though historic, performances. East German Frank-Peter Roetsch was the first ever to capture both the 10-km and 20-km biathlons, a daunting standard for future ski shooters. Even more notably, Soviet Cross-Country Skier Raisa Smetanina tied for the most decorated competitor...
Still, Thomas deserved credit for maintaining considerable poise in the face of all the preshow hype, as did Witt. Everywhere the rival ice queens went, cameras snapped, reporters prodded, fans pursued. Some excess was inevitable, the inescapable glamour of a competition that features svelte young women in scanty costumes. As Thomas sardonically remarked, "It's definitely a Miss America sport...
Witt was confident in her ability to score high on "artistic impression", she could avoid a technically challenging program. But those skaters who didn't pass the conventional glamour test had to design thrilling, athletic choreography, the kind of choreography that puts ice skating in the category of sport. No viewer can fairly say that the judges were biased against Debi Thomas--she stumbled and fell, she seemed awkward and unconfident. But it does seem that Witt won without the disadvantages Thomas and other skaters had to face: namely risky, exciting moves. While the audience waited anxiously to glimpse skaters...
Resentment of black advancement in athletics is especially fervent because sport epitomizes the ideal of male perfection. Many white men find it disturbing that a black might best fulfill that ideal (and might collect the accompanying glamour and money). Thus, after Jack Johnson captured the heavyweight championship in 1908, the urgent search began for a "great white hope" to reclaim the crown. Some 60 years later, when no white fighter could manage to win the title in the ring, whites took solace in a cinematic champ, Rocky. The current pro football season cast up another unsettling black breakthrough. Black quarterbacks...
Tynan himself heedlessly outraced that luck. Affecting purple jackets and leopard-spot trousers, courting the social and cultural glitterati, restlessly glamour-traveling the world, he made it clear from the start that the critic's customary place as a dim lurker in the shadows was not for him. A bourgeoise childhood (he was the bastard son of a merchant who achieved knighthood) in provincial Birmingham taught him his lifelong horror of grayness. His legendary Oxford career as controversialist, actor, debater, director, dandy and libertine imbued him with his tropism toward fame's warming light. Indeed, it might be argued that...