It's a tragedy, I tell ya

By now I'm sure everyone has either heard or seen the debacle that was the finals of the women's Snowboarding Cross race. One of the competitors had taken so great a lead by the second-to-last jump she decided it would be fun to do a little trick and pulled what's known in the trade as a "Method Air". She also ended up with a face plant in the snow as she blew the landing, letting the boarder behind her pass her up for the gold medal.
I'm sure most people in the world are laughing their a$es off at her for what might be considered her "typical" American arrogant attitude, and really, who can blame them if they are? This was not only boneheaded, but wholly in violation of the spirit of the Olympic games. In fact, in the spirit of the ancient games, one might call it "tragic".
In ancient Greek drama, a "tragedy" had some very definite characteristics. The main thrust of the plot had to show the protagonist failing, usually in a spectacular fashion, due to some inherent character flaw. Most of the time, the protagonist would be felled by his (since most, if not all of the time, the characters were male) overweening pride, or hubris. That is exactly what happened yesterday to Lindsey Jacobellis. And in fact, if she were owning up to her action, she might be getting the same kind of sympathetic treatment that the classic heroes of Greek tragedy have been accorded over the centuries.
Instead, however, Jacobellis is trying to spin her way out of her responsibility, and it is that failure that is truly disheartening and dispiriting. Her immediate post-race interview found her trying to convince the listening audience that her Method Air was actually intended to stabilize her mid-air position to ensure a safe landing, just as she had done earlier in the semi-finals. This was completely contradicted by the good folks at NBC, who showed us her semi-final stabilizing move on a split-screen with her Method Air, proving her words false. Clearly that story wasn't going to fly, so now she claims that she was indeed pulling a stunt, but that she was simply "caught up in the moment".
Anyone finding this kind of truth manipulation a wee bit familiar? Who can really blame Jacobellis for spinning, though? It works for our top government officials all the time. It's interesting to me to see that for the sake of a sports story that will disappear into the mists of time in about a week, NBC is willing to demolish the spin of a 20-year-old snowboarder--who is obviously just radically embarrassed at perhaps having blown her one chance at a precious gold medal on the grandest athletic stage, in full view of the entire world--but is completely unwilling to do the same light digging when faced with the deadly lies and outrageous spin of our elected officials. We are all being made to suffer for their hubris, aren't we? That's the real tragedy. (Sorry to drag politics into this; it just seemed so obvious to me that Jacobellis was trying to handle the press, and that seeing her story debunked so quickly and dramatically on screen made me yearn for NBC, or someone out there in mediaworld, to pay the same attention to the truth when Smirky or Dick are at the mic.)