How to Shake It in America

More difficult accomplishment: winning gold in the decathlon or surviving a Kardashian Thanksgiving dinner?

With the Olympic's kicking off tonight, I am writing this post as a call to arms for our American athletes to stand for something again.  Iconic images like Tommie Smith and John Carlos giving a black power salute at the 1968 Olympics and Bruce Jenner celebrating a successful squeezing into of his gym shorts used to dominate Olympics coverage.  Now it seems to be a focus on British accents and US basketball games against Angola.  Those iconic images are moving, inspirational and lasting, but I am making a plea to our athletes to hijack the limelight for ulterior reasons.

O say can we reinforce to the world, that we are still as over-the-top, loud and obnoxious as ever.  Let's dominate these games in the category of tasteless and disrespectful xenophobia - that could be our new rallying cry.  Listen, it's not that we are the best, it is just that the rest of you countries are so comically far behind us in the overt self-confidence medal race that we stay up at night laughing into our personal homemade cotton candy machines.

Take Apollo Creed for example - he had spirit (until Dolph beat it out of him).  He hired James Brown to sing a song specifically for his entrance to the Dolph fight.  And this scene totally nails what it is like "Livin' in America" for any foreign viewers. Yes, we all have finely groomed mustaches, dress like Uncle Sam (during his stripping to put himself through college days) and force our friends to wear "boss" sweatshirts.  Following in Apollo's footsteps, I would love to see top Olympic Archery hopeful Brady Ellison work up a similar routine.  Possibly he could update the act and walk out to a Jeezy beat about "Hustlin' in America," while he fires off a couple roman candles from his bow.  In the interest of full disclosure, I would hope that Brady doesn't end up being pummeled to death by a steroid-built Russian while his coach and best friend stand idly by.  But even if it does end for Brady in that ironically similar way, I would be proud to call him a fellow American for once again putting our arrogance and over-production capabilities back on top.