Denigrate?

A law clerk working for the United States Olympic Committee sent a cease-and-desist letter to Ravelry recently.  It's reprinted in a number of places including here.  It has the usual stuff you might expect about patterns with the five rings on them infringing on copyrights.  They are also objecting to the name Ravelympics.  If Ravelympics has to be changed, I'll be annoyed, but mark it down to lawyers doing what lawyers like to do.  The thing that really makes me mad is this:

We believe using the name "Ravelympics" for a competition that involves an afghan marathon, scarf hockey and sweater triathlon, among others, tends to denigrate the true nature of the Olympic Games. In a sense, it is disrespectful to our country's finest athletes and fails to recognize or appreciate their hard work.

Your belief is wrong, USOC.  Naming our events after Olympic events is a salute to the athletes and their hard work.  It's insulting that you think we'd create and participate in an event that would be disrespectful.  I think that an apology is in order.  Instead we got this.

I suspect that the donation stuff at the end was a reaction to the UK handmade cushion disaster.  I'm not making anything for them.  I've already a cast on a pair of Stephen Colbert socks for this (scroll down until you see the picture of Stephen).