Olympics, kind of

I like the Olympics. I like seeing people striving to better themselves, and I love watching unknowns or underdogs do well and occasionally even surprise with a victory. I loved the opening ceremonies--I thought it was the best I've ever seen, to be honest (although the Barcelona arrow shot to light the flame surpassed this one). I like the concept of having some arena, somewhere, where at least on the field, the geopolitical world takes a backseat to something else. Something close (or closer, at any rate) to pure.
Naturally, Smirky (with Doll's Eyes) has come along to ruin some of the Olympics games for me. Every event he attends, the director is compelled (ordered?) to show him grinning idiotically and waving to somebody, clearly oblivious to the pain and deaths he has caused so many people. It offends me to see him so happy, so carefree, and so relaxed. The announcers must acknowledge his presence in reverential tones, athletes are summoned for a jocular affixing of nicknames or an attaboy, and we have even been subjected to an in-studio interview with Bob Costas. Even at the Olympics, NBC seems to be in the tank for its Republican masters, regardless of approval ratings (Smirky has been sub-30% for months, marking an unprecedented tenure of dissatisfaction from the country).
To top it all off, if watching live, we are forced to watch the abomination of John McCain's misleading and completely negative ads slurring Barack Obama. I wonder how much of a deal Ol' Wrinkly got from NBC, because his $6 million ad buy is stretching a heck of lot further than Obama's $5 mill, even though Obama bought earlier. For those who are unfamiliar with the process of ad buying, usually the early money gets more bang for the buck, as the growing scarcity of available time causes the rates per minute to rise even though the choice time slots are often taken. From what I've seen, though, McCain's ads have been running at least twice as often as Obama's so far, and I saw only McCain ads during the opening ceremonies, which are the most universally watched part of the Games. (Granted, I missed about 45 minutes, so maybe all of Obama's ads ran from 9:45-10:30. Uh huh.)
Luckily, most of the time the other NBC channels are running events concurrently, so I can switch back and forth to avoid Smirky and Ol' Wrinkly as much as possible. But TBO is not a fan of boxing (which has taken up a lot of MSNBC's airtime in the evenings) or my relentless channel surfing during unpleasantness, so I risk alienating the mother of my child as well.
Grrr.