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It’s about time we faced it. The Beijing Olympics are a sham. Think the Berlin Olympics of 1936. We shower all these platitudes on the world of sports, but as a sporting event, these Olympics are to sports what John Edwards is to marital fidelity.
We shouldn’t be in Beijing, not if we really cared about things like freedom and liberty. I don’t care how many speeches George W. Bush made on human rights while there, our participation is shameful.
These Olympics aren’t about how many gold medals we win, it’s about the number of Chinese dissidents that have been swept off the streets and into jails to make China look good. Here is a dictatorship that is getting all kinds of favorable publicity because of what is loosely called "The Games." Well, The Games stink because China’s human rights record stinks.
The hypocrisy smells like a city dump on a hot August day and China is making the most of it. How about this quote from Ambassador Consul General Peng Keyu: "This is a 100-year dream for the Chinese people, and China is a peace-loving country. The Beijing Olympics is now allowing the world to see the Chinese culture and tradition." The athletes are just an arm of the Chinese propaganda machine. Theresa Andrews, who won two gold medals for swimming in ’84, had the nerve to say she is "impressed" by what she has seen in China. Maybe that’s because the gulag, or whatever the Chinese call it, was not part of the Olympic tour. Former Olympian Larry Anastasi claims the Beijing Olympics have been "very, very elevating." OK, pass the Maalox.
Please, people! The Beijing Olympics are essentially being held in a barbed-wire compound separating the phoniness of sports from the reality of daily life in China. The Olympic dream of "One World One Dream" is being made a mockery in Beijing. Much has been made of the polluting fog, as the world’s athletes wear masks to keep from choking. They also are wearing symbolic blindfolds to keep their consciences from bothering them.
Look, I am a realist. I was all for engagement with the Chinese because I thought it would help loosen the grip of the tyrants running the country. Just airlift some cases of American blue jeans and rock-and-roll records and I thought China would realize the error of its ways. Well, it’s time to admit that hasn’t happened. Tiananmen Square is full of great looking young people today who proudly sport American jeans. But American jeans didn’t protect the students who were murdered in the square not that long ago. The dictators may have been able to wipe away the blood of the Chinese patriots who died that infamous day, but we should never forget what happened to those brave people and what continues today in China. The Beijing Olympics is but another effort by the Chinese government to clean the blood off its hands.
I heard an exchange the other day on a sports talk show between Mike Missanelli and his producer. Missanelli, to his credit, raised the question about the morality of being a party to the Beijing Olympics. He suggested maybe Kobe Bryant and some of the other high-profile American athletes might make a public statement to shed a little light on the plight of China’s dissidents. His young producer couldn’t understand what good that would do and he didn’t want anything to spoil the giant sporting event. I am not going to pick on the producer because his is the typical attitude of our athletes, our government and NBC, which doesn’t want anything to interfere with ratings.
What good would it do if we had stayed home or at least raised our voices against the Beijing Olympics? You would be surprised how much when organizations such as Amnesty International shine a light on human-rights abuses. Raise enough of a stink and maybe some dissidents would have even been freed. Outlandish? Not if you consider how badly China wanted to look good before the world.
Instead we turn our eyes away from those who cry out for help. We run and jump in the giant compound the Chinese built as a silly symbol of its "grandeur." We preen and show off our medals and, in doing so, puff up China’s woeful government.
As Bob Dylan once wrote, "Bury the rag deep in your face/For now’s the time for your tears."
