People like to pretend that the Olympics happen outside of time. Actually, the Games are always defined by the moment in which they're held, and if Sydney 2000 was the great global orgy, in which the condom machines in the athletes' village famously couldn't be refilled fast enough, Athens 2004 was often the uncomfortable morning after, the reckoning in which everyone was forced to bundle up the sheets and wonder where this whole international relationship was going.
Naturally, most of the anxiety in Athens was directed at, and emanated from, the U.S. Even though terrorism fears dissipated, many American spectators wrung...
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