Aussie Diver Matthew
Mitcham is Gay,
It's No Big Deal, and
We're Confused
By Spencer Hall,
Sportingnews.com Monday, August 25, 2008
A parting shot, or at least questions
regarding NBC's coverage of the Olympic Games.
First note: The U.S. men's volleyball team won gold on Sunday, the team coached
by Hugh McCutcheon, whose father-in-law was stabbed to death by a deranged
Chinese man at the Bell Tower in Beijing just a few days into the festivities.
The medal ceremony began, the anthem cranked up, and the camera panned a few
faces before settling on McCutcheon and then just ... sitting ... there.
No movement, no visible tears, but just one long stare that went about fifteen
seconds too long, turning a visual acknowledgment of tragedy into a voyeuristic
stare. It's as if they were waiting for tears that, for the ultra-composed
McCutcheon, never really came.
(Good for him, too. The whole moment felt intrusive and overstaged,
especially considering the intensity of a private tragedy like McCutcheon's.)
Contrast this storyline's
over-emphasis with the complete absence of Matthew Mitcham's story. NBC
mentioned his departure from diving to take care of "personal issues," and the
fact he'd returned to the sport just a year earlier, but completely omitted any
mention of Mitcham's unique status as the sole openly gay male athlete at the
Olympic Games.
There are two possible explanations: either we're all so comfortable with
gay athletes that it doesn't even merit a mention, or NBC thought it was too
delicate an issue to touch at all. I would love to assume it was the
first, but suspect it was the second, especially since his coming out was such
an essential part of Mitcham's comeback story. The first person Mitcham
greeted in the mixed area with media was the reporter who worked with Mitcham on
his coming out story, so it's not like Mitcham himself played it down. He
left that job to NBC, who may have omitted one of the more compelling sidelines
in the name of not offending those who might -- gasp! -- be shocked to find out
a male diver was homosexual.
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