No gauze-filtered montage for the gays

NBC laid the human interest stories on pretty thick during the Olympics. From the one-legged swimmer to Misty May's lost wedding ring, the stories ranged from inspirational to trite, and it seemed like NBC's pursuit of moving montages was unstoppable.

Until Mathew Mitcham won gold.

Mitcham, an Australian diver, was the only non-Chinese athlete to win gold in any diving event, so his win was newsworthy by any standard, but NBC's coverage conveniently skipped over the fact that Mitcham was the only openly gay man at the 2008 Olympics. NBC also, unusually, did not show footage of his mother and his partner reacting to his dives. NBC was not the only media outlet to ignore Mitcham's sexuality, and the omissions can't just be chalked up to time crunches. The New York Times's article the next day also did not mention Mitcham's orientation or his stuggle to raise money to bring his partner to Beijing to watch him dive.

OutSports.com summed it up pretty well:

It’s a big story. The only openly gay male athlete in Beijing pulled off one of the great upsets at the Olympics in a spectacular fashion. If he had had cancer, or if his parents had been killed in a car crash when he was 2, or if he had just proposed to his girlfriend, they would have mentioned it. But they never showed him hugging his boyfriend, never mentioned it. They referred to “personal problems,” but I’m afraid they decided Matthew’s sexuality was off limits. A real shame.

Fun Fact: if all of the 14 openly LGBT athletes were a country, they would rank just behind Romania and hold a commanding three medal lead ahead of Greece.