It’s the difference between British English and American English. In American English, a sports team is considered a singular noun; thus, “Brazil wins the gold” or “The Brazilian team wins the gold.” In British English, a sports team is a collective noun; thus “Brazil win the gold” or “The Brazilian team win the the…

Good for Brazil! Now maybe they can STFU about the US swimmers for 5 minutes.

OMG, I missed that story somehow. Ugh. Thanks (?) for sharing, I think.

Right, because all entitled asshole tourists are Americans. LOL Why don’t you ask some people around the Mediterranean Basin or in Africa their views on British and German tourists?

Oh FFS, public urination, petty vandalism, and even filing a false police report are all misdemeanors or citations, not felonies.

Yeah, that’s baldfaced extortion right there.

Without a doubt much of this money will end up being stuffed into Brazilian g-strings.

It likely would’ve been much less of a story. Brazilians hate the US and especially white Americans and they saw this sordid incident as a rich opportunity to humiliate the athletes involved, the USOC, and the USA in general.

LOL, we say that you’re being cordially required to do or attend such and such.

Oh yeah...I’d volunteer to whip those swimmers’ bare asses mercilessly as punishment for their transgression. Mmmmm....where do I sign up?

Petty vandalism, public urination, and even filing a false police report are misdemeanors, not felonies.

Perfect reply, and the 1st paragraph was the best and most concise version of events I’ve read. Everyone involved comes off looking bad, no one has clean hands. The swimmers were drunken, entitled assholes who engaged in petty criminal activity at worst; the Brazilians were corrupt and engaged in extortion.

I dunno, we let millions of foreigners pour into our country illegally and then have politicians want to reward them for breaking the law by offering them a “path to citizenship”. Sounds to me like the US gov’t cuts some slack for a lot of foreigners who break our laws.

Because the Brazilians were determined to extort them in order to publicly humiliate both the swimmers and the USA, but the truly guilty culprit was already beyond their reach.

Eh, Brazil doesn’t come off looking good in this story either. They blew up minor douchebro activity (public urination and petty vandalism) into an international incident and then extorted over $11,000 from the swimmers in order to humiliate them and the USA. I can’t blame Bentz if he thinks, “Fuck Lochte and Brazil…

Who gives a shit about the Pittsburgh Pirates?

Man, why couldn’t $11,000 have been considered an appropriate tip when I was waiting tables in college?

Ewww gross, wtf was that?!

Minor correction: Bentz didn’t pay the $11,000 extortion to get his passport back and be able to leave the country, it was Feigen.

Minor correction: It wasn’t an $11,000 bribe; the Brazilian authorities extorted the American swimmers (well, almost entirely Feigen) for that amount while they held their passports and detained them, all in order to save face and humiliate the swimmers, the USOC, and the USA in general. Eleven grand for a…