afbug said:
Lets just say that at US Masters, US Open, British Open, PGA Championship, etc. or Wimbledon or Australia Open or any commercial professional event, the winner gets his prize and kisses his trophy, but they do not play the winner's national anthem. Why do you think so? Is it not obvious?
When you are playing in a professional event, you represent yourself. So if you win, there's no anthem.
Olympics or World Cup or C'wealth games or other inter-country sporting event is obviously different. Countries send their players to compete, whether in singles or team events, and when they win, their countries' anthems get played. Why? Is it not obvious?
When you are playing for your country, whether in a singles event or team event, obviously you are representing your country, because it's your country that sent you there.
Hence by definition, Tiger cannot play for himself at the Olympics. If it's not clear enough, lets just say that unless the US Olympic Council selects Tiger Woods to play for them, he can't even play in the Olympics whatever his world ranking.
Hope you can see that.
By the way, there's another thread about linking Creative to Singapore that makes an interesting parallel read to this, the gist is that someone thought we should support Creative in its lawsuit against Apple simply because Creative is a Singapore company and has done us proud. However, in that thread the more rational wisdom prevailed, that Singapore != Creative != Singapore.
Check it out here.
On American patriotism, I think you need to understand Americans better. There are a lot of people with a lot of views. Bill Gates represents America? Do you know how many Americans would want to laugh at you? Do you know how many people hate him? For being too rich, too monopolistic, too powerful, etc. There's also a large no of people who hate Microsoft.
Even public office holders like Donald Rumsfeld get a lot of hate from all quarters, even the President himself has a lot of Americans unhappy with him as you may know from the opinion polls.
Don't ever imagine that Americans ever think that so-and-so represents their country, unless they have been specifically designated so (eg olympica athletes, astronauts, etc). And even then there's a lot of disagreement.
Americans are patriotic but you need to understand what patriotism means for them. When I was in the US, I saw more American flags flying around than I've seen S'pore flags in Singapore. What they are patriotic about is their country, their constitution and their values.
They are very proud of their armed forces. They are very proud of their flag. They are very proud of their history and traditions. They are very proud of their country's greatness. They are proud of their founding fathers. They are proud of the great Presidents-- Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, etc.
They can however be very cynical about their government. They can be quite distrustful of politicians as a whole. They are quite dismayed with the political system as a whole too. They respect the office of the President, but they don't necessarily respect the current office holder. In fact, there can be quite a distrust of the government.
It's quite something to understand American patriotism.
