{"id":8097,"date":"2016-08-30T16:24:22","date_gmt":"2016-08-30T16:24:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/2016\/08\/30\/ryan-lochte-just-wants-to-dance-apparently-with-the-stars\/"},"modified":"2016-08-30T16:24:22","modified_gmt":"2016-08-30T16:24:22","slug":"ryan-lochte-just-wants-to-dance-apparently-with-the-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/ryan-lochte-just-wants-to-dance-apparently-with-the-stars\/","title":{"rendered":"Ryan Lochte Just Wants To Dance, Apparently \u2014 With The Stars!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-style:italic;font-size:16px\">By  <a class=\"colorbox\" href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/monkeysee\/2016\/08\/30\/491929624\/ryan-lochte-just-wants-to-dance-apparently-with-the-stars?utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=sports\">Linda Holmes<\/a><\/span>  <\/p>\n<div class=\"ftpimagefix\" style=\"float:left\"><a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/monkeysee\/2016\/08\/30\/491929624\/ryan-lochte-just-wants-to-dance-apparently-with-the-stars?utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=sports\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/media.npr.org\/assets\/img\/2016\/08\/30\/gettyimages-589071354_wide-b7b57a6df11495040f141ac8cd011ede9797adb3-s1100-c15.jpg\" alt=\"\"><\/a><\/div>\n<div>\n<div><button>Enlarge this image<\/button><\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>Ryan Lochte poses with his gold medal. <strong>Harry How\/Getty Images<\/strong> <strong>hide caption<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>toggle caption<\/strong> <span>Harry How\/Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>If you doubt that Ryan Lochte is going on <em>Dancing With The Stars<\/em> to try to change the subject away from what he himself has called his <a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.today.com\/news\/matt-lauer-s-exclusive-interview-ryan-lochte-air-monday-today-t102063\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;immature, intoxicated behavior&#8221;<\/a> during the Rio Olympics, where he admits <a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/Entertainment\/ryan-lochte-made-mistake-rio-robbery-claim-moving\/story?id=41738959\" target=\"_blank\">he lied<\/a> about at least some of his story about being robbed at gunpoint, just ask him. It&#8217;s not a secret. He <a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/life\/tv\/2016\/08\/30\/lochte-dwts-m-not-crawling-into-cave\/89569508\/\" target=\"_blank\">told <em>USA Today<\/em><\/a>, &#8220;It&#8217;s just an amazing show and hopefully when I&#8217;m on it, people will watch and enjoy the show and talk about the show &#8230; Hopefully, it changes everyone&#8217;s mindset and just focuses on something different.&#8221; (Lochte has been charged in Brazil with <a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/thetwo-way\/2016\/08\/26\/491469384\/brazilian-police-charge-ryan-lochte-with-making-a-false-report\" target=\"_blank\">filing a false report<\/a>, though NPR&#8217;s David Folkenflik provided <a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.wbur.org\/hereandnow\/2016\/08\/23\/fox-anchor-swimmers-robbery\" target=\"_blank\">some useful caveats<\/a> recently on <em>Here &amp; Now<\/em> to some of the strongest accusations against him.)<\/p>\n<p>Redemption for Lochte \u2014 who, in the past, had eagerly embraced the role of <a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/monkeysee\/2013\/04\/24\/178784318\/ryan-lochte-and-the-easy-life-of-the-professional-public-dummy\" target=\"_blank\">professional public dummy<\/a>, real or not \u2014 is how the show sees it, too. Executive producer Rob Wade says, &#8220;Hopefully, this opportunity will be something that shows Ryan in a good light.&#8221; And in a line you would not believe if you hadn&#8217;t seen it published in black and white, Wade said, &#8220;I think at the end of the day, he really wants to dance.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Oh, <em>don&#8217;t we all<\/em>?<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>[embedded content]<\/div>\n<div><strong>YouTube<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Look, nobody is saying that Lochte has to be condemned forever for a single <a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/storyline\/2016-rio-summer-olympics\/u-s-swimmer-ryan-lochte-robbed-gunpoint-brazil-n630396\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;I was like, whatever.&#8221;<\/a> But the unseemly eagerness to turbocharge this one guy&#8217;s Limited Admission Of A Partial Possible Fabrication Apology Tour less than two weeks after Lochte began it cannot help but raise questions about which athletes are entitled to such pillow-soft landings after, let&#8217;s say, an international incident. It&#8217;s the kind of thing that&#8217;s hard to prove, since there&#8217;s a relatively small sample size of Olympians who return from the Olympics apologizing for lying and acting like juvenile drunks (again, this is essentially the shape of <em>his<\/em> account of what he did). Not a lot of 32-year-olds are going with immaturity as a defense in the first place, so it&#8217;s hard to say when they&#8217;d get a pass for it and when they wouldn&#8217;t. But I have to wonder: even if there were, would they all have television producers less than two weeks later specifically saying the hope was to show them in a good light? As opposed to, for instance, an <em>honest<\/em> light?<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t get me wrong: an appearance on <em>Dancing With The Stars<\/em> is always a long infomercial for your basic geniality. <em>Do you remember Joey Fatone from N*SYNC? Do you remember how much you like him? WHAAAAAT? You don&#8217;t? Well, here he is, agreeably learning the cha-cha! How about Kate Gosselin? Sure, you know her as a reality show star, but did you know that she is a very good sport about how she can&#8217;t dance?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a deeply weird logic to who gets to do <em>Dancing With The Stars<\/em>, but there are types they return to over and over: star athletes; Disney Channel veterans and other Celebrities Of The Young; women over 75 who will be praised for still being active; women over 35 who will be praised for still being active; nostalgia acts; people specifically famous in conservative politics (Tucker Carlson, Bristol Palin, Tom DeLay, and now Rick Perry have been cast); country musicians; and ringers. (Why did Alfonso Ribiero get to be on a show for amateurs? He became famous in a musical called <em>The Tap Dance Kid<\/em>! He is famous for dancing! Don&#8217;t get me started on the figure skaters, either.)<\/p>\n<p>The whole thing is a great big goof parade to begin with, whether you like it or don&#8217;t. It&#8217;s a shame that I can&#8217;t link you to a high-quality online version of Tom DeLay doing the samba to &#8220;Why Can&#8217;t We Be Friends?&#8221; while wearing a shirt with an elephant on it and dancing with a woman whose dress has a donkey on it. But it was real. As was his dance to &#8220;Wild Thing.&#8221; (Maybe Rick Perry will dance to &#8220;Third Thing.&#8221; No? Anyone?)<\/p>\n<p>Maureen McCormick from <em>The Brady Bunch<\/em> is on this season, and assuming they don&#8217;t run into &#8220;intellectual&#8221; property issues, I think it&#8217;s a very good bet that you&#8217;ll see her dance to either <a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=IFzyk0h0Jyk\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Time To Change&#8221;<\/a> or <a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=-4FprR_LNSU\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Sunshine Day.&#8221;<\/a> And there are many more: Laurie Hernandez, who emerged from the Olympics with no scandals at all! Marilu Henner! Babyface, who&#8217;s been making special appearances since <em>Beverly Hills, 90210<\/em>! Amber Rose! Vanilla Ice, now well into his third decade of exceeding expectations, durability-wise! (Honestly, though, a dance teacher is the perfect person to understand <a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=a-1_9-z9rbY\" target=\"_blank\">the key difference<\/a> between &#8220;ding-ding-ding-digga-ding-ding&#8221; and &#8220;ding-ding-ding-ding-digga-ding-ding.&#8221;) It&#8217;s not supposed to be anything serious.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s partly for this reason, in fact, that I would have let Lochte cool his heels and his new Refreshing Honesty Haircut in Subdued Chestnut for a little while longer. Not forever. I like <em>Dancing<\/em> as a way to rediscover Joey Fatone and check in with Maureen McCormick. I&#8217;m a little less sure how I feel about it as a PR machine for people who are still facing charges over an incident that&#8217;s still a little murky. I could have stood a little more of an interregnum of regret before they started airing clip packages and, I&#8217;m going to guess, having him dance to something like &#8220;Oops, I Did It Again.&#8221; You know, ironically.<\/p>\n<p>They had other options. I&#8217;m sure he&#8217;s not the only one who wanted to dance.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/blockads.fivefilters.org\/\">Let&#8217;s block ads!<\/a><\/strong> <a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/fivefilters\/block-ads\/wiki\/There-are-no-acceptable-ads\">(Why?)<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source:: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/monkeysee\/2016\/08\/30\/491929624\/ryan-lochte-just-wants-to-dance-apparently-with-the-stars?utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=sports\" class=\"colorbox\" title=\"Ryan Lochte Just Wants To Dance, Apparently \u2014 With The Stars!\" rel=\"nofollow\">http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/monkeysee\/2016\/08\/30\/491929624\/ryan-lochte-just-wants-to-dance-apparently-with-the-stars?utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=sports<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"ftpimagefix\" style=\"float:left\"><a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/monkeysee\/2016\/08\/30\/491929624\/ryan-lochte-just-wants-to-dance-apparently-with-the-stars?utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=sports\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/media.npr.org\/assets\/img\/2016\/08\/30\/gettyimages-589071354_wide-b7b57a6df11495040f141ac8cd011ede9797adb3-s1100-c15.jpg\" alt=\"\"><\/a><\/div>\n<div>\n<div><button>Enlarge this image<\/button><\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>Ryan Lochte poses with his gold medal. <strong>Harry How\/Getty Images<\/strong> <strong>hide caption<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>toggle caption<\/strong> <span>Harry How\/Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>If you doubt that Ryan Lochte is going on <em>Dancing With The Stars<\/em> to try to change the subject away from what he himself has called his <a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.today.com\/news\/matt-lauer-s-exclusive-interview-ryan-lochte-air-monday-today-t102063\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;immature, intoxicated behavior&#8221;<\/a> during the Rio Olympics, where he admits <a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/Entertainment\/ryan-lochte-made-mistake-rio-robbery-claim-moving\/story?id=41738959\" target=\"_blank\">he lied<\/a> about at least some of his story about being robbed at gunpoint, just ask him. It&#8217;s not a secret. He <a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/life\/tv\/2016\/08\/30\/lochte-dwts-m-not-crawling-into-cave\/89569508\/\" target=\"_blank\">told <em>USA Today<\/em><\/a>, &#8220;It&#8217;s just an amazing show and hopefully when I&#8217;m on it, people will watch and enjoy the show and talk about the show &#8230; Hopefully, it changes everyone&#8217;s mindset and just focuses on something different.&#8221; (Lochte has been charged in Brazil with <a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/thetwo-way\/2016\/08\/26\/491469384\/brazilian-police-charge-ryan-lochte-with-making-a-false-report\" target=\"_blank\">filing a false report<\/a>, though NPR&#8217;s David Folkenflik provided <a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.wbur.org\/hereandnow\/2016\/08\/23\/fox-anchor-swimmers-robbery\" target=\"_blank\">some useful caveats<\/a> recently on <em>Here &amp; Now<\/em> to some of the strongest accusations against him.)<\/p>\n<p>Redemption for Lochte \u2014 who, in the past, had eagerly embraced the role of <a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/monkeysee\/2013\/04\/24\/178784318\/ryan-lochte-and-the-easy-life-of-the-professional-public-dummy\" target=\"_blank\">professional public dummy<\/a>, real or not \u2014 is how the show sees it, too. Executive producer Rob Wade says, &#8220;Hopefully, this opportunity will be something that shows Ryan in a good light.&#8221; And in a line you would not believe if you hadn&#8217;t seen it published in black and white, Wade said, &#8220;I think at the end of the day, he really wants to dance.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Oh, <em>don&#8217;t we all<\/em>?<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>[embedded content]<\/div>\n<div><strong>YouTube<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Look, nobody is saying that Lochte has to be condemned forever for a single <a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/storyline\/2016-rio-summer-olympics\/u-s-swimmer-ryan-lochte-robbed-gunpoint-brazil-n630396\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;I was like, whatever.&#8221;<\/a> But the unseemly eagerness to turbocharge this one guy&#8217;s Limited Admission Of A Partial Possible Fabrication Apology Tour less than two weeks after Lochte began it cannot help but raise questions about which athletes are entitled to such pillow-soft landings after, let&#8217;s say, an international incident. It&#8217;s the kind of thing that&#8217;s hard to prove, since there&#8217;s a relatively small sample size of Olympians who return from the Olympics apologizing for lying and acting like juvenile drunks (again, this is essentially the shape of <em>his<\/em> account of what he did). Not a lot of 32-year-olds are going with immaturity as a defense in the first place, so it&#8217;s hard to say when they&#8217;d get a pass for it and when they wouldn&#8217;t. But I have to wonder: even if there were, would they all have television producers less than two weeks later specifically saying the hope was to show them in a good light? As opposed to, for instance, an <em>honest<\/em> light?<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t get me wrong: an appearance on <em>Dancing With The Stars<\/em> is always a long infomercial for your basic geniality. <em>Do you remember Joey Fatone from N*SYNC? Do you remember how much you like him? WHAAAAAT? You don&#8217;t? Well, here he is, agreeably learning the cha-cha! How about Kate Gosselin? Sure, you know her as a reality show star, but did you know that she is a very good sport about how she can&#8217;t dance?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a deeply weird logic to who gets to do <em>Dancing With The Stars<\/em>, but there are types they return to over and over: star athletes; Disney Channel veterans and other Celebrities Of The Young; women over 75 who will be praised for still being active; women over 35 who will be praised for still being active; nostalgia acts; people specifically famous in conservative politics (Tucker Carlson, Bristol Palin, Tom DeLay, and now Rick Perry have been cast); country musicians; and ringers. (Why did Alfonso Ribiero get to be on a show for amateurs? He became famous in a musical called <em>The Tap Dance Kid<\/em>! He is famous for dancing! Don&#8217;t get me started on the figure skaters, either.)<\/p>\n<p>The whole thing is a great big goof parade to begin with, whether you like it or don&#8217;t. It&#8217;s a shame that I can&#8217;t link you to a high-quality online version of Tom DeLay doing the samba to &#8220;Why Can&#8217;t We Be Friends?&#8221; while wearing a shirt with an elephant on it and dancing with a woman whose dress has a donkey on it. But it was real. As was his dance to &#8220;Wild Thing.&#8221; (Maybe Rick Perry will dance to &#8220;Third Thing.&#8221; No? Anyone?)<\/p>\n<p>Maureen McCormick from <em>The Brady Bunch<\/em> is on this season, and assuming they don&#8217;t run into &#8220;intellectual&#8221; property issues, I think it&#8217;s a very good bet that you&#8217;ll see her dance to either <a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=IFzyk0h0Jyk\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Time To Change&#8221;<\/a> or <a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=-4FprR_LNSU\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Sunshine Day.&#8221;<\/a> And there are many more: Laurie Hernandez, who emerged from the Olympics with no scandals at all! Marilu Henner! Babyface, who&#8217;s been making special appearances since <em>Beverly Hills, 90210<\/em>! Amber Rose! Vanilla Ice, now well into his third decade of exceeding expectations, durability-wise! (Honestly, though, a dance teacher is the perfect person to understand <a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=a-1_9-z9rbY\" target=\"_blank\">the key difference<\/a> between &#8220;ding-ding-ding-digga-ding-ding&#8221; and &#8220;ding-ding-ding-ding-digga-ding-ding.&#8221;) It&#8217;s not supposed to be anything serious.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s partly for this reason, in fact, that I would have let Lochte cool his heels and his new Refreshing Honesty Haircut in Subdued Chestnut for a little while longer. Not forever. I like <em>Dancing<\/em> as a way to rediscover Joey Fatone and check in with Maureen McCormick. I&#8217;m a little less sure how I feel about it as a PR machine for people who are still facing charges over an incident that&#8217;s still a little murky. I could have stood a little more of an interregnum of regret before they started airing clip packages and, I&#8217;m going to guess, having him dance to something like &#8220;Oops, I Did It Again.&#8221; You know, ironically.<\/p>\n<p>They had other options. I&#8217;m sure he&#8217;s not the only one who wanted to dance.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/blockads.fivefilters.org\/\">Let&#8217;s block ads!<\/a><\/strong> <a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/fivefilters\/block-ads\/wiki\/There-are-no-acceptable-ads\">(Why?)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[221],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8097\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}