By Gil LeBreton
glebreton@star-telegram.com
Among my proudest keepsakes is an official Fort Worth Star-Telegram Olympic pin, commissioned specially for the 2004 Athens Games.
Pins are the time-honored currency at an Olympics. A flashy pin -- ours had five steers romping across the front in the five Olympic ring colors -- can open doors, procure a tough ticket, facilitate an interview or make a new foreign friend.
Thus, it was late one night while waiting for a media shuttle bus in Athens that I struck up a conversation with a radio guy from France.
His English, as I recall, was halting at best. But he loved Americans, he told me, and he had a keen interest in the NBA.
As a goodwill gesture, I offered him one of the
Star-Telegram pins, for which he thanked and merci-ed me profusely. And then he looked down and began to read the pin.
"Fort . . . Worth . . . Star . . . ," he said. And then his eye was caught by a small white sticker on the little plastic bag that the pin was housed in.
"Made in China?!!" the radio guy said, reading aloud in suddenly perfect English.
He immediately burst into laughter.
And handed the pin back.
I know firsthand, therefore, what the members of Congress were grumbling about last week when they learned that the U.S. Olympic team's ceremony uniforms were not made in the USA.
Reacting to a story by ABC News that the Ralph Lauren-designed outfits bore a label that read, "Made in China," both Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and John Boehner, R-Ohio, tsk-tsked.
"You'd think they'd know better," Boehner said of the U.S. Olympic Committee.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nevada, went even further. Reid told ABC, "I think the Olympic Committee should be ashamed of themselves . . . I think they should take all the uniforms, put them in a big pile and burn them and start all over again."
That won't happen, fortunately. There are American Olympic athletes already in the United Kingdom, and their suitcases are already unpacked.
But USOC spokesman Patrick Sandusky glibly -- and probably gleefully -- seized the moment, responding, "Unlike most Olympic teams around the world, the U.S. Olympic team is privately funded, and we're grateful for the support of our sponsors.
"We're proud of our partnership with Ralph Lauren, an iconic American company."
Sandusky is correct, of course. We have no pole vaulters on the federal payroll. Our swimmers are fueled by Gatorade, not government tea.
Our nation is unique in the Olympic world, in that our Olympians rely not upon government subsidies, but rather the kindness of sponsors in preparing for the Games. For better or worse, for rich or poor, it's the American way.
This is actually an unemployment issue, rather than an Olympic one. I understand that.
Besides, as ABC News itself reported, 98 percent of all clothing purchased in the United States is imported in some fashion from abroad. Sen. Reid's closet is likely full of Made-in-China shirts and slacks.
We just don't sew and stitch much in sweaty American factories here anymore. Instead, we design things, we engineer things, we market things and then we deliver things. Value added.
But let's not miss the point. Every four years, the U.S. Olympic Committee scrambles to find funding for its next quadrennium.
If General Motors needs a bailout and pulls out, the USOC has to find BMW to fill the sponsorship void.
It's a tough way for the USOC to pay its bills, but it's working.
What goes around also comes around. When the Chinese and Russian Federation teams take the field at the London Olympics, they'll be wearing uniforms by Nike, headquartered in Oregon, U.S.A.
I understand the complaints. My brief radio friend from France taught me that lesson.
The most valued mementoes are the ones that bear the authenticity and personality of the places they came from -- the wooden shoes from Holland, the stacking dolls from Russia, the kimono from Japan.
If you're looking for Made in the USA, you'll have to dig deeper than a pin or an Olympic blazer.
Like the spaghetti sauce commercials used to say, "It's in there."
Gil LeBreton, 817-390-7697Twitter: @gilebreton
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