I saw on the news today some video footage of American Olympic cyclists arriving in Beijing, China for the Summer Games.

The athletes looked like world class athletes should look - tall, sleek, strong, moving with a fluid grace through the airport terminal.

They looked fine. Except for the masks.

All of them - at least all of them that I could see - were wearing identical masks. Big black masks that covered their faces from just below their eyes to below their chins, with enormous black straps wrapped clear around their heads.

The group reminded me of some sort of crazed Michael Jackson convention gone bad.

The reason for the masks, of course, was as protection against the air of Beijing, the quality of which, if the reports are to be believed, is a cross between the noxious fumes from an active volcano and the stench from your grandfather's feet after he's mowed the yard on a 90-degree day while wearing rabbit fur boots and then waded barefoot through a pond of liquid manure.

The media, of course, have gotten quite excited about the whole thing. Reporters, barely concealing their glee, have practically announced that they expect most American athletes to keel over and begin retching, right there on the track, or the pool, or the parallel bars, after one deep breath. Or two. Or three at the most.

The cyclists apparently thought that if they didn't strap on their World War I gas masks, well, they would have blood pouring out their noses and eyes in a matter of minutes. Never mind that they'd just stepped off the plane. Never mind that they were still inside the airport. Never mind that they looked like doofuses.

Careful scrutiny revealed that none of the Chinese watching the mummified athletes pass by were wearing enormous black masks with enormous black straps. And none of them, as far as I could tell, had blood pouring out their noses and eyes.

Maybe I wasn't watching closely enough.

Anyway, I don't care. I don't care if Beijing's air is worse than an Iowa hog confinement. I don't care if you have to polish your teeth with sandpaper to get the grit off. I don't care if there's so much poison and radiation in the air that breathing through your mouth lights your hair on fire.

It's just rude to walk into someone else's country and act like you're Howie Mandel at a handshaking convention.

If I'm in your house and your mother brings me over a plate of food, I'm not going to hold my nose and grimace like someone just punched me in the kidney, even if the plate is filled with nothing but boiled curd. I'll suck it up. I'll compliment the chef. I may even eat the curd.

I just won't act like I'm too good for it.