Jim O'Donnell: Lessons from Hitler's Olympics apparently mean nothing to the profits of NBC
THE PARALLELS ARE imprecise at this point in time but nonetheless discomforting.
How much greater imaging loft would Adolf Hitler and his Third Reich have gotten out of the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin had they benefitted from the same see-no-evil spirit of NBC's coverage of the current 2022 Winter Games from Beijing?
Ratings for the first week of the Winter Olympics are thankfully tanking. They're down close to 50% from the same span at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games in South Korea.
While it would be reassuring to think that those depressed figures are the result of a new strain of international political enlightenment by the American mainstream, that's not likely.
MORE CENTRAL TO THE DIP is that the U.S. team simply isn't consistently competitive at the highest tier and that live competition airs primarily in the overnight hours.
The cunning, repressive regime of Chinese president Xi Jinping and the enormous threat it presents to the staggered American spirit and economy apparently are unmentionables.
Peacock Network chieftains clearly lack the courage and the independence to texturize illusory coverage of "The Dictator's Snow Show."
YES, THE UNITED STATES will win some gold medals. But as an ensemble, its team is already rummaging down with France, Italy and other historic Winter also-rans.
The pandemic, playdate TV America of 2022 will countenance a lot of things.
But failing to prevail isn't one of them.
So why watch?
THE 1936 BERLIN GAMES were a hypnotic accelerant in the consolidation of domestic power and heightened international legitimacy by Hitler's Nazi party. It should still be serving as an educational adjunct for all times.
The Nazis made use of notably visioned imaging and technological tools to boost their murderous foundational aims.
A significant portion of America bought into it.
IN 1938, THE BRILLIANT GERMAN filmmaker and propagandist Leni Riefenstahl visited the U.S. in support of her documentary "Olympia" - all about the 1936 Games.
She was feted by such powerful and influential Americans as Henry Ford, Louis B. Mayer and The Mouseman Himself, Walt Disney.
To show how enlightened the world of that era had become, Hitler's Germany was eventually awarded the 1940 Winter Olympics.
That event was preempted by World War II, the Holocaust and other global tragedies presaged in part by the sanitized imagery of the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
SO IN THE 2022 OF NBC SPORTS, why care about real world impact when an estimated $1.2 billion in rights fees have to be profitized?
After all, "shareholder value" trumps all.
And any lessons of the past that should endure forever are merely collateral left-behinds.
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• Jim O'Donnell's Sports & Media column appears Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com.