Thursday, August 14, 2008

The Sincerest Form of Flattery

Spain's Olympic basketball team has done a naughty.

Before leaving for Beijing, they met for a photo shoot in which they... pulled up the corners of their eyes, making them "slanty" at the photographer's request. You can't blame them, I guess--they're athletes, not rocket scientists. Just empty vessels, doing what they're told.














"We felt it was something appropriate, and that it would be interpreted as an affectionate gesture," explained point guard Jose Manuel Calderon.

Well, that's basically what everyone else thinks, too. Just the exact opposite.

So, if an African country is ever entrusted with the Olympics, I guess these guys are going in blackface.

2 comments:

Nick said...

Usually this is where I would put something funny, However, not this time. It amazes me that someone would find anything like this appropriate, but oh well. The sad thing is, all they are getting is a little bad PR through all of this, if the US basketball team had done this, The media would have crucified them from the get go, then they would have been thrown out of the Olympics and then to top all of that off, they would lose sponsors, and get fined by the NBA! I guess it is only a horrible moral crime if it is committed by an American! It turns out that this seems to only be getting a lot of kick around here and the China Olympic people see nothing wrong with it!

Anonymous said...

Well, it might become a bigger deal. I think it was just discovered a day or two ago.

Plus, it's Spain. Apparently, they kind of have a reputation for being culturally insensitive.

This reminded me of Maggie's (from Extras) "Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees, what are these?" moment. :)