Great job Americans in New York

no kidding. if all those africans can assume english names for themselves, like catherine, paul, margaret, sammy, etc, then why doesnt meb give us something more pronounceable.

paul tergat is alot easier to read and say than keflezghi.

Honestly, Meb did nothing for me today for as soon as he finished he grabbed his Eritrean flag and prounced around with the Africans.

I don't remember Salazar ever wrapping himself in a Cuban flag, post a New York victory...

You know I don't remember Meb waving that flag in high school when he won the San Ciego section meet? And I don't ever recall him waving the flag around campus at ULCA. What that all about?

Good for Meb ... if A-holes like All American Boy can't accept him than why should he pander to racist jerks by picking up the Stars and Stripes?

Personally, I cheer for athletes, not countries or races. Nationalism is reprehensible 99% of the time.

nation of immigrants wrote:

Good for Meb ... if A-holes like All American Boy can't accept him than why should he pander to racist jerks by picking up the Stars and Stripes?

Personally, I cheer for athletes, not countries or races. Nationalism is reprehensible 99% of the time.

how is it racist? he wanted to be american so why can't he wave the american flag? i don't see it having anything to do with race.

sounds like woodrow wilson:

Wilson also regarded those whom he termed "hyphenated Americans" (German-Americans, Irish-Americans, etc.) with suspicion: "Any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready."

Because being American doesn't mean being blindly nationalistic, it means personal freedom to wrap yourself in whatever dam flag you please. Meb has every right to be proud of where he came from and celebrate anyway he pleases because of where he is now - America. He brought this country a silver medal for cripes sake - what more does he owe us?

Ritzenhein isn't exactly the most Anglo-Saxon name either, but no-one seems to b**** about him not being a real American. My guess is someone in his family immigrated at some point. Which generation it happens in hardly matters.

The beauty of America is that people like Meb who are fleeing from civil war, oppression, poverty, etc., can come here and become great. It's something to be proud of that people can come to this country from all over the world, start from nothing, and have the freedom and opportunity to succeed. It doesn't hurt America when immigrants or refugees do well, it shows something amazing about America. Someone like Meb makes me amazingly proud to be American, because it reminds me of how much my country has to offer, no matter who you are and where you come from.

And if he wants to honour where he came from by also waving that flag, I don't think that's a rejection of America, so much as it is an acknowledgement of the distance travelled, and the hardship overcome to get here. He runs for America, he wins medals for America, how does it hurt us if he also acknowledges the road he took to get here? Do you object when people have a St. Patrick's Day parade, or wear kilts, or open Chinese restaurants because this is America and everyone should be exactly the same and erase everything about their roots? The best thing about America is the freedom to be who we are, and I can't understand how anyone who loves the constitution doesn't embrace this.

And as you can see by my use of English spelling in that last post, I'm an immigrant too. And I don't feel any less American for it.

Do you complain everytime you see a Southerner with a Confederate flag drapped in their window, in the back window of their car, tatooed on their back, raised at a state capital?

I don't understand why anyone would drape him or herself with a country's flag after the NYC Marathon. This isn't the Olympics or WCs so it doesn't really matter where someone is from. Can you imagine someone at work pumping his or her fist and chanting Kenya or U-S-A after closing a deal? The fact that he whipped out the Eritrean, not American, flag here should leave little doubt in anyone's mind that where is allegiances are. I'll take Downin's 2:14 any day over that.

the confederate flag is a piece of sh*t and every time I see one i rip it down, and will continue to. other countries flags are different, the confederate flag is an insult and anyone who wears or displays it is a damn fool and most likely completely ignorant of its implications. Good for meb for displaying pride in his home country and also in ours. He has the right to do that all he wants. Sadly so do the damn confederates, screw all the damn a-holes who insult america with confederate flags, its not a damn statement of where you came from cuz you think you're a special southern boy, its a statement how damn retarded you are. Completely different situations.

Yeah....How about Downin? He ran well and is actually an American born and bred. If Meb wants to carry that flag then why doesn't he just go back to where he was born and run for his home country. I don't get it. Pretty weak not carrying the American flag don't you think?

"I am a citizen, not of Athens, or Greece, but of the world."

- Socrates (5th Century B.C.)

"The age of nations is past, the task before us now, if we are to survive is to shake off our ancient prejudices, and build the earth."

- Teilhard de Chardin

"Abolition of war is no longer an ethical question to be pondered solely by learned philosophers and ecclesiastics, but a hard core one for the decision of the masses whose survival is the issue. Many will tell you with mockery and ridicule that the abolition of war can only be a dream.that it is the vague imagining of a visionary. But we must go on or we will go under! We must have new thoughts, new ideas, new concepts. We must break out of the strait jacket of the past. We must have sufficient imagination and courage to translate the universal wish for peace - which is rapidly becoming a universal necessity - into actuality."

"The very triumph of scientific annihilation has destroyed the possibility of war being a medium of practical settlement of international differences. If you lose, you are annihilated. If you win, you stand only to lose. War contains the germs of double suicide. Military alliances, balances of power, leagues of nations all in turn have failed. We have our last chance. If we will not devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door."

- General Douglas MacArthur

You guys are actually all wrong.

He wrapped himself in BOTH the Eritrean and American flags.

So everyone's argument, except Woodrow Wilson's, is crap.

Woodrow Wilson's argument is crap for an entirely different reason.

I am not at all annoyed by any FLAG situation. To me any Flag is simply a bolt of cloth. However, to some the Flag carries a lot of meaning. Knowing how sesitive people are to this situation, Why does Meb do it? In nearly every interview he says that he is pissed for how he is perceived, but yet he does something that he knows people have a hard time with. If it is important to him what others think (and it wouldn't be to me, but he says it is to him in every interview) then the Flag is a stupid idea.

Anyone know if Frank Shorter called him?

One kid to another kid, "ha-ha my mom has more hyphen's in her name than your mom!"

A National flag is a symbol of just that--nationalism.

What meb is proud of is his race and ethnicity--this is not the same as his nationality. Chinese Americans are very proud of their Chinese heritage but that doesnt mean alot of them will wave the Chinese national flag, with it's communist implications. The current Chinese national flag has only been in existence for 50 years, even though the Chinese have been around for 5000 years. So what does a flag have to do with anything? Nations come and go, flags come and go--see USSR, East Germany, Cezhoslovakia, and pretty soon North Korea and Taiwan.

If, and that's the operative word, Meb really wants to be accepted as an Ameican national, then he should not be waving the flag of another nation.