Was the Polo Pony Too Big for the Olympics?

Apparently some people i.e. Jeff Koopersmith, of the American Politics Journal, is pissed about the Ralph Lauren-designed attire, U.S. Olympians wore during the opening ceremonies at Beijing's Bird's Nest Stadium on Friday.

Specifically his contention is with the oversized ponies, emblazoned on the sport jackets, which he says turns the athletes into "unpaid billboards." Koopersmith adds there's irony to be found in the fact "that polo is not an Olympic sport"; and mentions it saw" its last Olympic performance at Hitler’s (Gasp!) Olympic Games in 1936."

Yeah, I don't agree with him (except maybe for the billboard part). And at the risk of sounding equally dramatic and exaggerative, why does everything bad have to be linked back to Hitler? (To Koopersmith's credit, I think he was being funny.)
Anyway, pony aside, our Olympians looked as chic as, well, Polo models. They represented for our big, fat, ostentatious, logo-loving nation. And the truth is, if something (be it a purse or leather car seats) has the LV monogram, or comes replete with giant, ugly, C's, we'll wear it, carry it, put our pets in it and (in extreme cases) use it to pimp out our rides.


Yeah it's pretty sickening and tacky (and quite actually, hideous), especially considering, our current economic situation. But there you go. To put it another way, (while we're all being overly analytical) Lauren didn't humiliate us so much as he accurately portrayed the shallower portion of our population.

If Koopersmith really needs something to pick on, however, those newsboy caps were kind of ridiculous.


Ralph Lauren Humiliates America [American Politics Journal]

Via The Cut.
Lower images courtesy Ralph Lauren.