While millions of Americans are happily tuning in to cheer on their fellow countrymen and root for Team USA, some members of the liberal media are not smiling.  Salon.com writer David Sirota, author of a lengthy piece published on Wednesday, is among them, and finds himself "increasingly interrupted by pangs of discomfort" watching our nation's athletes compete on the world stage. "Not because," he claims, he is "ashamed of our country or our Olympians," but because of the way that "the relationship between American nationalism and the Olympics" has been "infused with...politicized meaning."

First, he launched into a tirade about the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics which he calls "a Cold War spectacle of hyper-patriotism deliberately orchestrated to give the big middle finger to the boycotting Soviets and their allies." Then, he called the 1992 Barcelona games an excuse to use the Olympics to "to spike the ball in the end zone — or, more accurately, 360 windmill dunk over the rest of the planet" and questions why "we have to rub our strength in" and "preen on the world stage in such cartoonish fashion."