The Whiner Olympics

The group that is lavishly paid to oversee the Olympic games, the International Olympic Committee, has decided, for whatever reason, to not allow women's ski jumping on the menu for the next winter Olympics. That's their job, to make this sort of decision. And Lord knows they do it rarely. The women ski-jumpers, unfortunately, don't agree with the decision, and don't agree with the IOC's right to make the decision. Whining like a bunch of kindergarten kids protesting nap time, they've taken to the streets flinging out the buzzwords of the day (women's rights, equality) to try to overturn the ruling.
I have no brief one way or the other on the merits of the sport. What I take issue with is the lack of willingness to accept the authority of the IOC, who are, after all, only doing what they are paid to do. Sort of. Somebody has to be in charge. As soon as there is controversy, of course, politicians, who have no dignity to preserve, and the press, who will promote anything that produces easy copy, get into the act, and the situation deteriorates into a noisy brawl.
It's symptomatic of a larger malaise in our society, the presumed almighty right to have exactly what one wants exactly at the minute one wants it. And, when this doesn't happen, the almighty right to throw tantrums in public places. This everlasting sniveling over every minor setback is unseemly. Aren't these folk supposed to be good sports?

Speaking hopefully

Well, the discussion was about changes to the English language and whether or not they are Good Things.
Of course, the language changes. I can still remember, back in the day, the first time I heard access used as a verb. It's not a bad thing. It's a useful expression.
Hopefully on the other hand, used at the beginning of an expression to distance the speaker from all responsibility engendered in the phrase "I hope", is an abomination and should be stricken from the book of acceptable phrases. Unfortunately, it has become thoroughly embedded and probably will never go away. It's right up there with momentarily the way the TV announcer uses it. "We will be back momentarily." If only it were true. But he means "in a moment", not "for a moment", as one might expect.
One of my pet peeves is the confusion between quantity and number as illustrated by the folks who say "less" when they mean "fewer", as in "Less people came to the game." Unless we're measuring them by the pound. . .
Someone will surely ask, why do you care? The answer is, because every one of these small confusions makes the language less capable of subtle distinctions and therefore poorer than it was.
Of course, not every one agrees. See http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/