Bissinger: Turn off The Olympic Lights

Amen.

 

Exactly! Oh you have no idea how much the people over there love our products and culture.

As it is now, bits and pieces are oozing into their conscious. Christmas, though they don't really know how it has started, is picking up pace. Valentine's Day is becoming larger and larger.

The taste of Americanism is on the tip of their tongue.

This is my hope.

I am not sure about the long term impact beyond the few weeks that are the Olympics. The people there will not be able to sort it out once the foreign journalists are gone.

 

The Olympics are not what they should be because, right from the start, when they attempted to graft the classist system of British prep school "amateurism" on the rest of the world, they have been led, by and largem by the dregs of the corporate and political worlds, from the racist anti-Semite Avery Brundage, right down to the present day. They have been awarded to Nazi Germany, militaristic Japan, to a Mexican autocracy that slaughtered its own people outside the stadium in 1968, and now, the most loathsome regime on earth. They have made accommodations with all of them, from forcing the US team to leave its Jews at home in 1936 to what is surely going to be a repressive attitude toward free speech this summer. All of this took place before the rather tepid era of political protest that started in 1968, and deservedly so. (Smith, Carlos, and Peter Norman are heroes, as was Vera Caslavska, the Czech gymnast who looked away from the Russian flag six weeks after the tanks rolled into Prague.) To blame the corruption and deeply ingrained amorality on some modern episodes of protest is stunningly inapt.

 

Oh, my goodness.
Avery Brundage has been dead for 30 years.
His amateurism crap has been dead for nearly 20.
The 1992 Olympics featured tons of professionals -- like I said, nearly 20 years ago. Brundage's ideals are gone. If that's the best reason to kill the Games, you needn't worry. It's gone now.
BTW: The Olympics were in Tokyo in 1964. What did Japan have to be "militaristic" about in 1964?
And one question: If you hate every government on Earth, which sure seems to be the case, why are you so eager to make ours bigger?

 

bookmark.

 

Must be from Odessa

 

I second the "hogwash" . If the games are a vehicle to draw attention to human rights failings of the China then the plug should be pulled.

 

Can't imagine China not not doing something about journalists who choose to shine the spotlight on the situation once they get there. That government is not all of a sudden going to start caring about the bad PR that would come from cracking down on journalists.

And let's be honest here: does anyone expect the outlet with one of the biggest reaches at the Games, our very own NBC-TV, to touch any story that might upset the Olympic hosts? Or will we get a lot of shots of temples with pretty, canned "Asian-sounding" music, with voiceovers about this wonderful ancient culture?

 

The whole event certainly creates a dilemma for Keith Olberman as one of NBC's announcers for the games. He has been very outspoken on human rights violations in other countries. He will surely be conflicted here. I would not be surprised if he begs out of going.

 

If his own MSNBC show is any indication, Olbermann will first wait to see which way the wind is blowing. He will then adapt his style and rhetoric accordingly.

 

one has to wonder if the Chinese will have installed a wireless signal blocking system large enough that, if they dislike the message being beamed around the globe, they'll simply jam everything. Or will the oppression be more old fashioned? I have a second cousin who spent three years there with an American company that assisted in infrastructure development, and he left his wife and two daughters in the U.S. In part, it was an effort not to disrupt their lives, but it was also because he recognized how banana republic that country can be. The stories about outspoken individuals being bumped off and their families being paid reparations were quite rampant. What will they do with professional outspokenists all over the place as they tend to be at the Olympics?

 

Taking the ball and going home is not the way to influence the jerk.

If you want change you have to interact.

What are the alternatives to influencing change in china except by interaction?