I went back to the L.A. Times Olympic blog because I wanted to check for an updated list of countries' medals per capita list. Instead of the list, I found countless comments that the last post generated - or rather that the last post's comment generated.
As a comment to the post from August 17th, Margarita wrote:
"Mr. Culpepper's pathetic sarcasm aside, I think it's incredibly remarkable that such tiny, poverty-ridden countries that most people cannot even locate on a map have shown such athletic prowess and talent. With all the money, support, food, propaganda and access to performance-enhancing drugs that major countries like the US and China have at their disposable, it's amazing that they don't dominate and take three for three in every event. Is that fact keeping Mr. Culpepper from acknowledging the accomplishments of these forgotten countries without lacing his entire article with biting sarcasm?"
The cause of the extremely long flood of comments are these (slightly) misunderstood words: "poverty-ridden countries". I believe that whoever Margarita is, does not know what/ where Slovenia is and probably assumes it looks a bit like something you see in movies like Eurotrip and Wag the Dog, where they show a very American interpretation of Eastern European countries. I also believe that Margarita only meant well and wrote within boundaries of his/her knowledge of Slovenia. Great...but what the flood of comments and patriotic posts from Slovenians demonstrate is what a lack of knowledge causes. Slovenian are proud of their country, as every nation is. We (yes, I'm Slovenian) tend to not over dramatize our patriotism and really don't show it that obviously, unless we come across comments like the one made by Margarita.
You have to understand that it's hard to be a small country that nobody knows about or thinks that it's still a very dangerous war zone that you should avoid. As we meet people from other countries we have to convince one at the time that our country is safe, that we have a very competitive economy, that our living standard is almost the same as in the rest of "western" Europe and so on and so on. So you can see how we get very irritated when people like Margarita say uneducated things like that. They might have been meant in a very subtle way, but to us they sound loud and hit us right in the spot that opens the "patriotic" flood gates. And I am pretty sure every nation has a spot like that...for Americans it could be saying that they are stupid, for Canadians that they are just like Americans etc.
So please, before saying thinks about any country, please make sure that they are accurate. We all sometimes say things that we don't know much about but when talking about other nations and other countries it just causes too much problems and evokes strong emotions. Sadly, floods of posts like the one on the L.A. Times Olympic blog never reach a conclusion and never promote understanding and peace.
As a comment to the post from August 17th, Margarita wrote:
"Mr. Culpepper's pathetic sarcasm aside, I think it's incredibly remarkable that such tiny, poverty-ridden countries that most people cannot even locate on a map have shown such athletic prowess and talent. With all the money, support, food, propaganda and access to performance-enhancing drugs that major countries like the US and China have at their disposable, it's amazing that they don't dominate and take three for three in every event. Is that fact keeping Mr. Culpepper from acknowledging the accomplishments of these forgotten countries without lacing his entire article with biting sarcasm?"
The cause of the extremely long flood of comments are these (slightly) misunderstood words: "poverty-ridden countries". I believe that whoever Margarita is, does not know what/ where Slovenia is and probably assumes it looks a bit like something you see in movies like Eurotrip and Wag the Dog, where they show a very American interpretation of Eastern European countries. I also believe that Margarita only meant well and wrote within boundaries of his/her knowledge of Slovenia. Great...but what the flood of comments and patriotic posts from Slovenians demonstrate is what a lack of knowledge causes. Slovenian are proud of their country, as every nation is. We (yes, I'm Slovenian) tend to not over dramatize our patriotism and really don't show it that obviously, unless we come across comments like the one made by Margarita.
You have to understand that it's hard to be a small country that nobody knows about or thinks that it's still a very dangerous war zone that you should avoid. As we meet people from other countries we have to convince one at the time that our country is safe, that we have a very competitive economy, that our living standard is almost the same as in the rest of "western" Europe and so on and so on. So you can see how we get very irritated when people like Margarita say uneducated things like that. They might have been meant in a very subtle way, but to us they sound loud and hit us right in the spot that opens the "patriotic" flood gates. And I am pretty sure every nation has a spot like that...for Americans it could be saying that they are stupid, for Canadians that they are just like Americans etc.
So please, before saying thinks about any country, please make sure that they are accurate. We all sometimes say things that we don't know much about but when talking about other nations and other countries it just causes too much problems and evokes strong emotions. Sadly, floods of posts like the one on the L.A. Times Olympic blog never reach a conclusion and never promote understanding and peace.
Nevertheless, I did end up finding the latest list of medals per capita, so here it is:
1. Jamaica (7) - 400,618
2. Slovenia (5) - 401,542
3. New Zealand (9) - 463,717
4. Australia (36) - 572,246
5. Armenia (5) - 593,717
6. Estonia (2) - 653,802
7. Bahrain (1) - 718,306
8. Belarus (13) - 745,059
9. Cuba (13) - 878,765
10. Denmark (6) - 914,120
Selected Others:
11. Norway (5) - 928,891
13. Georgia (4) - 1,157,710
22. Britain (37) - 1,647,132
41. Greece (3) - 3,574,272
42. United States (82) - 3,705,178
50. Japan (23) - 5,534,279
53. Israel (1) - 7,112,359
70. Afghanistan (1) - 32,738,376
75. Mexico (2) - 54,977,700
79. India (2) - 573,997,949
Read about L.A. Times Olympic Blog's comment on the debate.
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