Now that the Beijing Summer Games have ended, the scorecard can
be totaled: (1) one American ally raped and pillaged by a major
Olympic country, while the American president cavorted with our
team as tanks rolled over the countryside, to stony silence from
the International Olympic Committee; (2) a gargantuan opening
spectacle that featured digital video fakery, pictorial
substitution of a photogenic child for the real kid singer, and
2008 zombies pounding in unison on drums; (3) Chinese kid gymnasts
whose true ages were likely below the 16 years minimum; (4) China
reneging upon its promise to allow protests during the Games, even
sentencing a pair of elderly, frail women to one year at a labor
camp for applying to stage a lawful protest -- with the IOC, having
promised that awarding the Games would induce Beijing to respect
human rights, ignoring Beijing's duplicity; (5) once again, widows
of the 11 Israeli athletes murdered by Palestinian terrorists at
the 1972 Munich Games unable to persuade the IOC to formally
memorialize them, lest Arab sensibilities be offended.
The modern Games, as conceived by Baron Pierre de Coubertin for
1896 in Athens, bear not the slightest resemblance to the amateur
ideal those embodied. Today's Games are a multi-billion dollar cash
cow. Even before his gold orgy at the Beijing Games, Michael Phelps
was earning $5 million annually; he earned a $1 million bonus from
Speedo for his epic harvest. Training is a full-time job; there are
no true amateur athletes anymore. Cheating is endemic.
Pseudo-sports like synchronized swimming dot the video landscape,
and sports like tennis and baseball clutter a vastly overstuffed
extravaganza. There are countless world championship events, none
of which existed in 1896. Nazi Germany, the former Soviet Union and
East Germany, and now China deformed the Games by their
totalitarian sports programs.
The Olympic Charter sets forth the "fundamental principles of
Olympism," of which the second merits particular notice:
2. The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the
service of the harmonious development of man, with a view to
promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of
human dignity.
As Russian athletes competed in the Games, and as Russian Tsar
Vladimir Putin attended Beijing's opening party, Russian tanks
rolled to begin the dismemberment of Georgia, which had the
temerity to think its entire sovereign territory rightly its own,
and freedom from Russia's tyrannical embrace its right as well. In
1980 Jimmy Carter exacted a price for the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan by imposing an Olympic boycott of the Moscow Games.
Russia, having raped an Olympic country while the Games were going
on -- indeed, using the start of the Games as a cover to move while
the world was preoccupied with the Games -- has been awarded the
2014 Winter Games. They will be held at Sochi, a mere 15 miles from
Abkhazia, one of the two Sudeten provinces Russia now claims. The
IOC, which cares no more about Georgians than about the slain
Israeli athletes, will do nothing.
Baron de Coubertin lived long enough to see the Nazis profane
his festival. He might have thought 1936 an aberration. Count the
Baron fortunate that he didn't live long enough to see how his
ideal was superseded by mega-commercialism and drowned --
literally, in the blood of innocent people -- by tyrants who used
the Games for political prestige.
Make no mistake: the Games will go on. They need not. But they
will. Too many people watch; too much money changes hands for the
Games to be tossed onto the ash-heap of history. But the IOC can be
forced to clean up its obscene act. Nations that have anything
resembling a conscience must boycott the Games and prohibit
companies from sponsoring or engaging in any activity, including
broadcasting.
As the Games are now a permanent feature of the international
political and sports landscape, watched by billions, let us at
least divorce them from the Baron de Coubertin's good name. Label
them the mega-commerce event they have become. There is nothing
intrinsically wrong with this: Nobody faults Tiger Woods for raking
in megabucks.
Above all, dispense with the phony Olympic principles and keep
under wraps strutting IOC nabobs with their stomach-turning pieties
as their heads turn away from massive human rights violations,
ostensibly celebrating the "harmonious development," "peaceful
society" and "human dignity" of "Olympism," traduced yet again in
2008.
China detained American activists who protested repression of
Tibetan dissenters, to silence from the IOC. Over Russia's latest
atrocity IOC uttered not one peep. Yet the IOC did find time to
chastise as contrary to "the Olympic spirit" serial showboating by
Jamaica's Usain "Lightning" Bolt, Jamaica's triple gold medal
sprinter. "One world, one dream," proclaimed motto of Beijing 2008,
was lost on Putin and the IOC.
Call the Olympics, from now on, by city and sponsor and year --
for example, "The 2012 London Speedo Olympic Games," if Speedo
antes up. Let corporate sponsors conduct a global bidding war for
rights to brand each Games, which will help the host country defray
the massive expense of staging them. Let athletes, if they wish,
compete for corporate sponsors, or jointly compete for their
country and their sponsor. Think of it: Nike trails Puma in
medal count, with just three days to go.... Let Baron Pierre
de Coubertin rest in peace, and let his name no longer be profaned
by the modern Games.
To accomplish this requires that we change the maxim of the
Games -- citius, altius, fortius (faster, higher,
stronger) -- to one more suited to the Bacchanalian spectacle to
the 21st century Games. A maxim from Horace, the Roman sage, could
work:
Et genus et fornam regina pecunia donat -- "Money, like
a queen, gives both rank and beauty."
topics:
Vladimir Putin, Sports, Law, Russia, Israel
