Shmolympic Season Again

It used to be the world had to suffer through the Olympics every four  years, now it haunts us every two years.   Fourteen years ago, I worked for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta and I witnessed from an insider's perspective all of the ineptitude and corruption that made me despise this mega-corporation masquerading as some kind of a "sports movement".

This year is no different.  In the run up to the games, they have again demonstrated incredible abuse of copyright and trademark laws, documented here.   Next, we saw their callous attitude towards the death of one of their athletes, an Olympic tradition since 1972.   Not to mention all of their technical failures or their rampant environmental hypocrisy.

Let's face it, the Olympics is a traveling circus that leaves financial ruin in it's wake. It is the worst example of corrupt crony capitalism.   Even the television coverage is a sap filled nonsense.  I want to puke when I hear the NBC affiliates covering the Olympics during the news like it is the top story of the day.

For more of my observations on the Shmolympics, read here.

Shomlypics Update

Chicago lost it's bid for the 2016 Olympics. Initially, I was disappointed. Not because I really care if they got the games, but because some people in Denver indicated that they wanted to bid the 2018 winter Olympics if Chicago lost.

That horrified me. The Olympics is a corrupt, greed infested, commercialized fiasco/extravaganza traveling circus with major corporations acting as the "carnies". I am proud to live in Denver, the only city that was ever awarded the Olympics, but turned it down.

Denver was to host the 1976 winter Olympics, but the voters wisely cut off funding in a 1972 election. The Olympics then went to Innsbruck Austria, which had just hosted the games in 1964.

Fortunately for us, the US Olympic committee has decided not to submit a bid for the 2018 games, so Denver is safe from the international Olympic cronies until at least 2022.

Good riddance.

Denver Update and the Olympic Effect

You can read my Denver Update on PlanetEye here. It is part of a pattern that I have observed at highly anticipated major events such as the Olympics and the Superbowl.

Step One: City is awarded a major event, nightmare scenarios are predicted for lodging and transportation.

Step Two: Every business in town prepares for record breaking crowds, and quadruples their prices in an attempt to gouge visitors.

Step Three: The residents and regular visitors anticipate this and change their habits, avoiding the city at all costs.

Step Four: The event begins, crowds are light, and business suffers. Life goes on as normal with far fewer disruptions than a typical workday.

Step Five: Residents re-adjust to reality, and repopulate the city, just as the event ends.

This happened in Atlanta in 1996, Bejing last week, and Denver this week. It is predictable, but never predicted.

The Olympics for What it is.

This guy gets it.

Chinese Government Sentences Two Women 77, and 79 to Labor Camp for Applying for a Olympic "Protest Permit"

Just as I predicted, a moral cesspool, brought to you by the IOC and sponsored by Coca-Cola, Kodak, GE, McDonalds, VISA, etc.

Blogger Discovers Proof Chinese Gymnasts are Underage

Here is a fantastic blog post about the underage Chinese gymnasts that illustrates many truths:

1. According to official Chinese government documents, the gymnast He Kexin was below the minimum age allowed by the rules.

2. Mainstream media is either too lazy or unskilled to perform investigative journalism anymore.

3. The IOC is amazingly hypocritical. They unquestionably trust the World Anti Doping Agency's scientifically useless drug tests, but can't seem to take any action against a clear violation of their own age limits.

Your Complete Guide to the Shmolympics

Here

Blue Screen of Death Haunts Shomlympics

Priceless

Hat tip: Eric Meadows

All Four Events, Ten Hours Later!

NBC has been committed to covering all four events in this years Shmolympic Games: Gymnastics, Track and Field, the Dream Team, and Phelps. Results of anything else can be found in small "stock quote" type on the back page of your local paper's sports section.

Unfortunately, NBC been tape delaying sporting events, a particularly boneheaded move, especially when they have twisted the IOC's arm to begin events in the morning so that they appear "live" in the US.

Of course this should be no surprise to people who realized that NBC edited and partially faked the opening ceremony coverage to delay the entry of the US team until the end of the broadcast in order to boost ratings.

Shmolympics Update

China to World: Remember when we said there wouldn't be internet censorship during the Olympics, we lied.

That is because it turns out that the Olympics is more for internal propaganda to support the communist party, than it is for international propaganda. Therefore, who need tourists?

Shmolympics

If there was a poster child for everything that is wrong with capitalism, world politics, and sports, it is the Olympics.

This "sporting event" is a fantastic mechanism for the international crony-elites to throw themselves a big party while propping up a totalitarian communist regime at the same time.

It is with great glee that I note that their precocious flame has been repeatedly extinguished and their relay has been halted.

There is just so much outrageousness and irony in this account, I don't know where to begin.

I can start with this line: "China’s official Xinhua news agency on Monday condemned the “vile misdeeds” of protesters in London."

You know you have lost the moral high ground when the Chinese government comes out on your side with words like that.

Then there are the repeated quotes by China's version of Baghdad Bob such as:

“'The torch represents the Olympic spirit, and people welcome the torch,' said Wang Hui, the spokeswoman."

"Ms. Wang blamed the disruptions in London on a 'few Tibet separatists'”

Note to Ms. Wang, they have cameras in Europe, and the news is free to broadcast the 'vile misdeeds' that citizens in democracies typically refer to as protests.

Finally, we have this wonderful quote:

"A Chinese spokesman, Qu Yingpu, said Chinese officials were grateful to the police “for their efforts to keep order.” He added: “This is not the right time, the right platform, for any people to voice their political views.”

Lovely. Exactly when, in China's view, is the preferred time and platform to express one's political views?

It seems like the whole world is so misled about the Olympics. Let's be clear, the Olympics is a multinational entertainment company. It is not a religion, or even a movement. It is just a company, and not a particularly ethical one at that. The 2008 Beijing games will almost certainly go down in history with such moral cesspools as the 1936 Hitler games in Berlin and the 1972 PLO massacre/Olympics in Munich.

It is wrong for news organizations to cover their stupid torch relay as a "majestic procession" embodying the "human spirit" or any other quasi-religious nonsense.

I once thought that the Olympics were some kind of non-political, non-commercial celebration of peace and harmony. Then, I worked for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. I realized that of eleven different departments in ACOG, the corporation that put on the games, only one of which was "sports". All I saw was an unadulterated greed-fest as everyone in every two bit town from Tennessee to Florida thought they could rent out their couch for a $1000 a night. I saw shopping malls that wanted to charge $50 to park. I saw bleachers of empty seats at the otherwise sold out velodrome that were reserved for the "Olympic Family" that obviously couldn't care less about cycling. Then I saw the velodrome dismantled and sold off. I saw Bill Clinton refer to Francisco Franco's fascist stooge Juan Antonio Samaranch as "his excellency."

I am not a devoted Tibetan rights activist, but I do think it is wrong to hold a major international sporting event in a brutally repressive country that violently suppresses all dissent. It was wrong in 1936, and they haven't learned a damn thing since.