Phelps’ mom set for return to school duty Debbie Phelps sat in a luxury hotel suite with a view of the Manhattan skyline Wednesday, a parade of TV cameras and reporters passing through to interview her. A day earlier, she shot a commercial that will air during the closing ceremonies of the Olympics. She is almost as recognizable to viewers as her record-setting son, the many close-ups during Michael Phelps’ races making her the face of every parent. The nerves, the pride, the joy. But today, Debbie Phelps planned to return to a very different setting and a very different audience. She is the principal of Windsor Mill Middle School in Baltimore, and she needs to run two staff meetings and a leadership meeting. “Then I’m going to be waiting for the weekend, because I’m going to crash during that time,” she said. On Monday, her more than 600 students return to school. “It’s going to be a huge change,” Debbie said. It is quite a leap from watching your son swim to Olympic gold in Beijing with the President looking on to overseeing middle schoolers. “You have to get yourself grounded again,” Debbie said.
Debbie Phelps was honored as the “Johnson’s Baby Mom of the Olympic Games” and shot the commercial as part of the company’s “Thanks, Mom” ad campaign. She has used her visibility to promote awareness for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, with which Michael was diagnosed as a child. She believes that more than medication is needed to help kids with ADHD. “Kids need structure. Kids needs consistency,” she said. “I don’t care if they have ADHD or not, they have to have those parameters in order to be successful.” Tip in McClatchy Newspapers columnist Israel Gutierrez said he has tried introducing an age-old American element into China’s culture during the Olympics in Beijing. The element ? Greed. In a local culture where tipping is sometimes considered an insult, Gutierrez and other American colleagues have been handing over extra yuan to cab drivers. At first the gestures were rebuffed, but, Gutierrez wrote, “cab drivers are accepting tips now like real, money-hungry Americans.” “ I only feel sorry for the natives of Beijing, who will now either be expected to tip or be looked at as cheap when they don’t, ” Guiterrez wrote. “Hey, it’s the American way.” Rural exposure Perched on a stool beside a roadside fruit stand piled high with melons and pears in farming country north of Shanghai, Meng Zhoucui conceded she’s not a big sports fan. But like many Chinese who normally wouldn’t pay much attention to sports — or to any other news — Meng said she’s doing her best to keep up with the action 600 miles away in Beijing. “Yes, sure I’m watching, at night when I have the time,” said Meng, smiling at her husband who stood watching as she spoke. “But he watches during the day and tells me all the latest news.” Still, even those in the countryside with little time to watch are enthralled by China’s time in the limelight. “Of course I’m watching. It’s China’s games. Why shouldn’t we watch ?” exclaimed shopkeeper Zhou Zhaolin, standing behind the glass counter of his seed store in the region outside Shanghai known as “Subei,” the traditionally poorer half of Jiangsu province, north of the Yangtze River. Party with wheels An overhead camera swung back and forth, while helicopters circled and the crowd filled with characters. Several wore Dr. Seuss-style top hats. One guy wore a sombrero; another a Viking helmet. Break dancers broke up the monotony between heats by performing odd versions of the Robot. The Australian contingent held foam fingers. And then people started drinking. Olympics, meet BMX cycling. BMX, welcome to the Olympics. Landon Hooberry took a break outside the madness. Having come to Beijing from Arizona, he found himself outside of the BMX site Wednesday, long hair flowing from beneath an FBI hat, looking for scalped tickets. Once inside, he proclaimed victory despite the oppressive heat. “I’m stoked,” Hooberry said, clutching a U. S. flag in one hand, a cigarette in the other. After the sport debuted with Wednesday’s competition, the American riders gathered down the hill from the site at a bike shop called Trek. In the back, they sat at tables, eating muffins and sandwiches and cinnamon rolls. They hugged their parents and shook hands with their coaches and relived the races they had just finished. “The Olympics are the biggest thing we’ll ever do,” Mike Day said.
Keeping the lid on North Korea is heading for its best Olympics — and doesn’t want to shout about it. “Of course we are proud of our athletes, that goes without saying,” said a team spokesman, who wouldn’t identify himself. He then hung up and didn’t answer repeated calls. It’s not just a case of bashfulness in Beijing. At home, few Olympic events are shown live on television and press reports barely mention the reclusive nation’s haul of seven medals, including two golds — the second-best in history. Delivering news of a first gold medal since 1996, the national news agency, KCNA, carried a three-sentence report listing the weights that Pak Hyon Suk lifted for the title. “She thus came first in the 63 kg category final competition,” the story concluded. Hardly the splurge of propaganda that might be expected in a state that misses few chances of self-promotion to a population experiencing its worst food shortages in a decade. The lack of Olympic hype is a deliberate exercise in keeping people from looking beyond their borders, said Mike Breen, author of Kim Jong Il: North Korea’s Dear Leader. “To have it in China, so close to home, would be a stark reminder to their own people of how China has changed,” Breen said in a phone interview. “Minimizing reporting of the Olympics is in order not to highlight what a basket case of a country they are.”
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