Nike vs. Obama and Phelps

There is, for me, a peculiar shame in TV-induced tears. I don’t know why, but I find crying in front of a television to be particularly ridiculous, especially if it’s a typical twenty-one minute-ish episode and not a solid hour of It’s Not TV It’s HBO. It may be the empty sense of abandon I experience after a good cry that cable television can only exacerbate by cutting to commercial, or that feeling that perhaps I’m an android, in which case, tears are going to seriously screw up my motherboard. So this Olympics summer, when I found myself brought to tears by Nike’s “Courage” commercial that featured clips of everyone and everything from Cristiano Renaldo (determined to win) to antelopes to astronauts to an unborn fetus (determined to be born), set to The Killers’ “All These Things That I Have Done,” I thought I might have been reborn out of the gaping vagina that is Nike enterprises. Swoosh indeed.

I wondered why the rest of the Olympics didn’t make me cry, why the sight of Momma Phelps losing her cool in the bleachers as her son defied physics, as well as Mark Spitz, didn’t elicit as real an emotion as the one manufactured at Nike headquarters. I know they have some damn good advertisers, more successful than any Phelps-approved product--they have to with all those human rights violations--but it all came down to length. Brevity is key. At one full minute, Nike hit their target. They pumped the emotions at a frenzied pace so that the tears exploded out of my eyes before I could fully realize what had happened. The Olympics, on the other hand, were long, drawn out, and after Phelps won, I really didn’t give a shit. I had to wait to get some emotion, and when the moment finally came, Deborah Phelps—like her son—did a better job than any of us on this side of the TV—as well as the chromosome connection—could ever have.

Despite my reluctance to cry in front of a TV screen, the big screen has, on occasion, made me weep. I cried at “Mighty Joe Young.” Also at, “Apollo 13.” Or every time Forrest talks to Jenny’s grave and talks about how much he misses her or Raymond Babbit repeats the "Who's on First?" sketch. But these are easy. I have an unwavering fondness and sympathy for gorillas (the bigger the better), Tom Hanks, and the mentally handicapped--especially Tom Hanks as someone who is mentally handicapped. Which is why, sitting in my living room, sobbing and staring at a flash of the Nike logo on TV, I thought, 'what perfect timing,' now I'm ready for Obama.

Hardly more than ten days after Phelps bobbed his goggled head up from under the pool of millions of dollars of endoresement deals, Obama took the stage at the Democratic National Convention in Denver to accept his party’s bid to become the 44th president. I wanted to cry—it seemed an appropriate and well-orchestrated time, everyone was doing it—but Katie Couric had already ruined that for me by smiling, not blinking, and reciting over and over how Obama would be the first African-American president if he won. Thank you. I had not realized that. I don’t know if I was more pissed that Obama as an individual was constantly reduced to his African-American-ness as polite talk for epidermal speak, or that Couric seemed smug that she had moved us Americans at home to tears by relying on that one glaringly obvious fact. I should be fair—I’ve never liked Katie Couric, and mostly for reasons found above her neck that produce an aura of perkiness I find more suitable in a Chihuahua, that and she has no lips. But something about being milked for tears by a woman I ultimately find boring as some mediocre orchestra crescendos into Obama orgasm oblivion just didn't do it for me the way Nike did--it's all about the arch support.