February 17, 2018: Special Winter Olympics Edition

Once again, Friends, the Olympics are going downhill fast:

1. Finally dispelling years of criticism that it was a gutless bureaucracy of nest-featherers, the International Olympic Committee moved boldly to ban hundreds of drug-marinated Russian athletes from the Winter Olympic Games. After hearing their glassy-eyed appeals, the IOC finally relented and let a bunch of them back in, but only after exacting a Draconian sanction: Instead of calling themselves “Russian Olympic athletes,” they must refer to themselves as “Olympic athletes from Russia.” Former critics of the IOC quickly apologized for ever alleging that the agency was toothless and not to be taken seriously. Faced with the threat of such punishment, all Olympic athletes stopped cheating immediately.
2. The sister of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un stopped by the Olympics to check out the combined team of North and South Korean athletes in the opening ceremony. The consensus was that the close confidant of one of the world’s most bloodthirsty tyrants managed to outshine the vice president of the United States on the Charm-o-Meter. American intelligence officials worked around the clock to analyze her technique, finally concluding that it consisted of standing up and smiling when the athletes walked by. The Pentagon immediately asked Congress for $60 billion so that Vice President Pence could be trained to do that.
3. American athletes kicked off the actual competition with a bang, winning several gold medals in Another Batch of Events Where You Slide Down a Hill on Barrel Staves. Apparently, repeatedly spinning upside down in the air was something they meant to do.
4. A German couple were the surprise gold medalists in pairs figure skating. The fact that they won wasn’t a surprise; the surprise was that they were determined to be German. The male was French until a few months ago, and it took three tries at the citizenship test and a $30,000 bribe to France from the West German government to make him German. His partner explained that the German language was giving him trouble on the test, because German, it turns out, is hard to learn. She should know. She won medals for Ukraine until 2002, when she suddenly became German and started winning medals for Germany. IOC officials explained that the pair were the embodiment of the pan-nationalist ideal of the Games.
5. In other skating news, the men’s short program – or maybe it was the short men’s program – was marred by an American skater falling right on his quadruple lutz. It was not immediately clear whether he would have to undergo painful lutz surgery.
6. NBC televised – honest to God – grown men hurtling face first down an ice track on what appeared to be trays they had pinched from the Olympic cafeteria. Security officials later explained that the network had been the victim of a hoax perpetrated by drunken Korean fraternity boys.
7. In a stunning upset, Americans Lindsey Vonn, Mikaela Shiffrin and Lindsey Jacobellis swept the gold, silver and bronze medals from the heavily favored Scandanavians in the marquee Olympic Blond competition. Norway filed a protest, pointing out that Jacobellis was forced to forfeit the gold in 2006 after she tested positive for Clairol Nice ’n’ Easy, and that two people with a stupid first name like Lindsey cannot share the medal podium, especially if they are American. The IOC resolved the protest by ordering that the bronze medalist be referred to as “Olympian from the United States Lindsey Jacobellis.”