Let's get over the 'Miracle on Ice'

I caught some of the hour-long (or so) special NBC ran Sunday about the "Miracle on Ice" hockey game from the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, N.Y., and I commented to a guy sitting next to me how lame and pathetic it was that we keep rehashing that moment, 30 years later. Well, I should've guessed this would happen in a bar with TVs everywhere, but the guy looked at me like I was Stalin himself, apparently offended on some level. That was the end of that "conversation."

I get it, American amateurs vs. the big, bad Russian pros. It's straight out of a Disney movie (in fact, it was made into a Disney-like, cheeseball, feel-good gagfest of a film). Let's move on. I mean, Al Michaels, who made the famous, "Do you believe in miracles!?" call at the end of the game, was clearly beside himself with anticipation the whole interview with three of the players -- who have clearly made a living off that game -- to tell how he graced America with such a memorable, touching phrase. Ugh.

So I completely agree with Matt Taibbi here.

Seriously, can we get over ourselves about the Miracle on Ice? It was great and all, but you hear about it every five minutes in this country. I lived in Russia for 10 years and didn’t even once hear about a bunch of Soviets with hideous mustaches whipping the asses of David Robinson, Danny Manning and Mitch Richmond in basketball in Seoul in ‘88. I heard a lot about the 1972 thing, but that was only in the context of Russians being so amused by how much we whined about getting jobbed by the refs.

I mean really, whatever happened to acting like you’ve been there before? I’m trying to imagine what the citizen of someplace like Liechtenstein or Reunion Island thinks when he sees Americans keeping a 30-year boner over the image of themselves as longshot underdogs who beat the odds.

Like so many things in America, I think our incessant gloating and paranoid fragility (see: Gitmo) come down to insecurity, coupled with unhealthy nostalgia and misplaced identity. But we're not underdogs. We're America. Get over it.