This just in:

Lopez Lomong, one of the Sudanese "Lost Boys" and a member of the anti-genocide group Team Darfur, has been chosen by his 595 U.S. Olympic teammates to carry our flag on Friday. What, we couldn't find a Tibetan monk on the team?

...Just hours before U.S. team captains met to decide on the flag carrier, Chinese officials rescinded the visa of Joey Cheek, a speedskating gold medalist who carried the U.S. flag at the Closing Ceremonies at the 2006 Winter Games and later co-founded Team Darfur. After that slap at Cheek, U.S. athletes here had almost nothing to say on the topic. One even referred to the subject as "the question they warned us about."

Perhaps they didn't answer individually. But the entire U.S. team gave its answer -- as a group and in capital letters -- with Lomong's selection. You jerk Cheek's visa. We put Lomong in your face. And do it proudly.

You have to hand it to the Chinese Communist Party: They certainly know how to muzzle Americans. Cheek, a Princeton grad, might have held a seminar. Four billion people around the world will see Lomong carrying our flag.

Far more than that, untold millions of people, in the next few days, will hear Lomong's life story, in his own words. In a half-hour monologue here on Friday, just 10 hours before he was to carry the flag, Lomong told a tale of grief, endurance, redemption and almost unimaginable hardship that captures in human terms every aspect of the Darfur tragedy. And without Lomong saying a single "controversial" political word, he highlighted China's culpability by cynically supporting the Sudanese regime as partner in the vast oil company PetroChina.

I feel proud.