Of course, Canada is significantly more mature than I am, so instead, Canada has merely turned the other cheek.

Oh, Canada.

The Vox Populi is heaping criticism on the Vancouver Olympics.  True, it’s hard to get off on a hugely positive foot when someone dies before the games have even started, but you can go on ahead and call me heartless and insensitive and crass because I am, but hello?  It’s the luge!  Winter Olympians are mostly very fit, pink-cheeked people trying not to slice their legs open with blades or crack their skulls on packed snow. It’s a miracle it doesn’t happen more often.  I can’t even watch figure skating because it makes me so anxious, and not only as a result of the truly astonishing hideousness of the outfits.  When I tune in, I’m certain I’m about to see devastation and gore.  Have you seen the footage of Shaun White hitting his head at the X Games?  Egads.

And then there was the whole opening ceremony lighting the flame debacle.  I guess they had no way of anticipating that it would look strange.  And we, the viewing audience at home, weren’t quite sure what to think.  I’m talking, of course, about the fact that Wayne Gretzky seems to have had so much plastic surgery that he more resembles an aging, startled Manhattan socialite rather than the greatest hockey player in history.  Also, the flame thingy didn’t work. 

Skiiers complained about how bumpy the downhill course was.  Journalists carped about the lack of snow.  The speed skating track had to be re-worked at the last minute.  There was some kind of hoohaw about a chain link fence around the flame inhibiting tourists’ ability to take photos.

I call sour grapes.  Canada has it so all over the U.S. that we’re all shuddering with delight that the city voted the most livable in the WORLD hasn’t pulled off a perfect 10 in Olympic planning.  Remember Atlanta?  There was an explosion.

Canada’s unemployment rate is lower than ours.  Canada’s citizens have healthcare.  For free.  Canadians’ per capita income is growing at a faster rate than ours and their dollar kicks our dollar’s butt and then laughs at it.  Canada’s air is cleaner, water is more drinkable, and forests are bigger and healthier.  Canada’s crime rate is lower.  Canadians live longer.  Canadians report being happier.  Canada’s economy is stronger, and the fact I found most interesting and surprising is that Canada’s people have something like over 3 times the representation in government than Americans do. 

I looked at the major Canadian newspapers’ op-ed pages and I was dismayed to find a bunch of stuff about what the United States is doing and how Obama is doing and why our Congress is pathetic.  Maybe it’s just that everything is so totally OK in Canada that they have to get their bitching out somehow and we provide the most fodder.

Here’s the thing, and I think it explains why the Olympics isn’t “perfect.”  Canada is just Canada.  It’s not trying to be America – especially the Disneyified version of America that we seem hell-bent on promoting at any of our big-time events.