Day 3 of the Olympics and people are still talking about Irina Rodnina, the racist FOV (friend of Vlad) Russian politician, elected to Putin’s United Russia party, and former legendary Olympic figure skater. Apparently, she doesn’t like the Obama’s very much.

Here’s the backstory:

Last September, Irina Rodnina made headlines around the world when she tweeted a Photoshopped pic of Barack and Michelle Obama appearing to stare at a banana. You’ve probably all seen the photo. It’s pretty awful and has been around Facebook quite a while. The photo and tweet outraged the Obama administration and prompted outgoing U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul to denounce Rodnina’s “outrageous behavior, which only brings shame to her parliament and country.” Rodnina did erase the tweet shortly after that, but refused to apologize, making some sort of “freedom of speech” speech, which is entirely ironic coming from a Russian FOV, right?

Here’s Irina Rodnina’s photo tweet.

In spite of this pretty outrageous international incident, Russia still gave the great honor of lighting the Olympic torch this past Friday night to Irina Rodnina, along with fellow Olympian Vladislav Tretyak. The Sochi Games’ organizing committee president and CEO Dmitriy Chernyshenko defended the honor of the racist Rodnina by saying this:

“She is a three-time Olympic champion, one of the most respected in the world of Olympic athletes. I want to stress that Olympics is not about politics, and any political talks about discussions are inappropriate.”

Seriously? That’s pretty lame. When haven’t the Olympics been political? And for the record, everyone who reads our blog knows we are not Obama fans here, but there’s just no place whatsoever to interject racism into the discourse.

But whatever. So knowing all of this would just add to the whole #SochiFail vibe, why did Vlad choose Irina Rodnina to light the Olympic torch? I don’t really know for sure, but I suspect part of it was a big public “FU, Obama!” for not coming to his “Worst Games Ever” Olympics.

Our “Weekend Links” are below the fold!