How Is NBC Going to Hide Russian Homophobia From Olympic Audiences?

Russia’s an ass-backward law outlawing “gay propaganda” essentially makes being openly gay (or openly supporting gay people) a punishable offense in that vodka soaked clusterfuck of dashcams we call a diplomatic frenemy. Unfortunately, Russia is hosting the Winter Olympics this February. Double unfortunately, their country’s sports minister is now reneging on a promise to welcome gay athletes and fans and is vowing to enforce the law despite the IOC’s request they join the rest of the western world in the 21st century. Oh boy, is NBC going to have fun with this!

If you’re like me, watching the Olympics on NBC is a biannual event celebrating soft focus, horn music, slow mo sports montages, and young Americans with 3% body fat and stage moms who drove them 3 hours to fancy sports practice every morning at 5 am so they could one day sign a cereal endorsement deal and then pen a modestly selling tell-all book about how their coaches were mean before fading into Trivial Pursuit answer obscurity. The Olympics are the shit. Watching NBC’s coverage of them requires one to slip into a childlike mental state where it’s easy to suspend one’s disbelief and just bathe in the schmaltz. Bathe in it. It’s good for your skin.

But that entire illusion disappears when fans and athletes are prosecuted under Russia’s embarrassingly intolerant anti-gay propaganda law, which will be in effect (and enforced) when the Games kick off in Sochi in early 2014. As of right now, the US is still planning on sending an athletic delegation, and NBC is still planning on covering them. So how is the network going to keep the shiny happy Olympic illusion alive for viewers like me? Here are my suggestions:

cut away from men’s ice skating competition before all participants are arrested
phallic bobsleds will finish in a chute painted to look like the inside of a vagina
Scott Hamilton’s sign off must include the phrase “NO HOMO” in Russian.
women’s downhill scissoring competition moved to neighboring Belarus
doubles luge to be performed in secret underground luge track under the cover of darkness
fewer colors in the NBC peacock
avoid filming Johnny Weir
get microphones that look less like dicks
no Olympic flame shots. Too flaming.

You’re welcome, NBC. Send my GREAT IDEA checks to my office address. The mail delivery in my new building is weird.