Olympics politics, now and then
China has cracked down on Hong Kong, committed a genocide against Uyghurs, and unleashed a pandemic on the world that has killed millions of people.
And the whole world sent their athletes to Beijing for the Olympics as if nothing happened.
— Mercedes Schlapp (@mercedesschlapp) February 4, 2022
But isn’t that the Olympics’ history?
There was 1936, when Hitler was the host:
Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler saw the Games as an opportunity to promote his government and ideals of racial supremacy. The official Nazi party paper, the Völkischer Beobachter, wrote in the strongest terms that Jewish people and Black people should not be allowed to participate in the Games. However, when threatened with a boycott of the Games by other nations, he relented and allowed Black people and Jewish people to participate, and added one token participant to the German team—a Jewish woman, Helene Mayer. At the same time, the party removed signs stating “Jews not wanted” and similar slogans from the city’s main tourist attractions. In an attempt to “clean up” the host city, the German Ministry of the Interior authorized the chief of police to arrest all Romani and keep them in a “special camp”, the Berlin-Marzahn concentration camp.
United States Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage became a main supporter of the Games being held in Germany, arguing that “politics has no place in sport”, despite having initial doubts.
And then in 1972 – which I believe was the next time that the Olympics were held in Germany – Olympic athletes from Israel were massacred by Palestinian terrorists, and the hostage-taking began in the Olympic Village itself. Astoundingly enough, Brundage was still in charge. There was only a slight pause, and the show went on:
In the wake of the hostage-taking, competition was suspended for 34 hours, for the first time in modern Olympic history, after public criticism of the Olympic Committee’s decision to continue the games. On 6 September, a memorial service attended by 80,000 spectators and 3,000 athletes was held in the Olympic Stadium. IOC President Avery Brundage made little reference to the murdered athletes during a speech praising the strength of the Olympic movement and equating the attack on the Israeli sportsmen with the recent arguments about encroaching professionalism and disallowing Rhodesia’s participation in the Games, which outraged many listeners…
Many of the 80,000 people who filled the Olympic Stadium for West Germany’s football match with Hungary carried noisemakers and waved flags, but when several spectators unfurled a banner reading “17 dead, already forgotten?” security officers removed the sign and expelled those responsible from the grounds. During the memorial service, the Olympic Flag was flown at half-staff, along with the flags of most of the other competing nations at the request of Willy Brandt. Ten Arab nations objected to their flags flying at half-staff and the mandate was rescinded.
On a personal note – I stopped watching the Olympics years ago, although now and then there are certain sports I check in on, such as ice skating. Haven’t even done that in recent years, and I used to love the Olympics. The political tone-deafness is part of it, I suppose, but for me it really started to go downhill when it stopped being limited to amateurs and became a glossy production number.
It has become increasingly more difficult for IOC to find sites for the games because of all the cost involved in facilities and other mitigation. That is apparently how Beijing ended up being the first site to host the summer and winter games as the ChiComms have no worry about wasting money though I think these games are spread out big time as Beijing is not exactly an ideal geographic location for winter sports.
FYI:
Paris 2024
Milan 2026
Los Angeles 2028 (won’t that be fun)
Brisbane 2032
One frequently sees the term “Uyghurs” or “Uyghur Muslims” and in a brief scan of the Wikipage, it seems that Mao incorporated the area & people into China in 1949.
So,why don’t we see the leftists complain about “Islamophobia” or the improper takeover of native lands as they do with Palestine? The only celeb/person who seems to be very vocal about the matter is Eric Kanter Freedom – the NBA player who recently became an American citizen.
I know – the leftists are more into communism so that trumps everything. Or, have I missed some press?
I used to love the winter Olympics. Who could not love the Miracle on Ice?
I won’t give one second of my time to NBC/CCP. I feel bad for the athletes, but the US, and other countries, should never have participated this year.
The Olympics, perhaps inevitably given its internationalism has become a perfect barometer of the corruption rampant in the world.
The Olympics now cover so many sports that the project, summer or winter, is massive, and, as Neo points out, it’s an entertainment production rather than a straight athletic event. I stopped watching the TV coverage long ago, when there were more “up close and personal” spots about athletes than there were minutes of actual competition.
Each of these sports has its own national and international championships, which are focused on the competition, and often without the out-of-control political aspects. Even those will go, for women’s sports, if the transgender competitors continue to be allowed.
I’ve received feedback from astute lawyers who note that public accommodation businesses in California, where Airbnb is based, are subject to the Unruh Civil Rights Act — which forbids the very kind of anti-free-speech, anti-free-association and anti-equal housing discrimination Airbnb has visited upon me and my family. Much more is at stake, of course, and there are other sound legal grounds for seeking relief.
IOW, they’re a California company blatantly violating California law. Liberal outfits engage in this sort of try-every-door behavior routinely and they usually get away with it.
It has become increasingly more difficult for IOC to find sites for the games because of all the cost involved in facilities and other mitigation.
Put the summer games in Greece and the winter games in Switzerland and cut down the number of sports to what it was in 1945.
The modern Olympics are a combination of the Edsel and New Coke, let the marketing people come up with a plan that they think will please the most people and then find out hardly anyone likes it. I quit watching this stuff with a little bit of sports and a lot of background stories along with the participants becoming full time dedicated pros and beyond the distance and time events becoming circus acts. It has been over 20 years since I gave a flip about watching any of this stuff, summer or winter.
I was a huge fan of the winter games for the years 1948, 5’2, and ’56 because I knew some of the skiers who were competing for the U.S. I followed the alpine and Nordic ski events. Have usually made time to watch those events over the years. And I have followed the FIS World Cup results in alpine skiing annually until this last year (2020/21) when they held only one event.
I particularly enjoyed the Winter Games when they were held in Vancouver with the alpine events at Whistler. Was not crazy enough to try to attend in person but we know Whistler quite well and could appreciate the events held there because of that familiarity.
Since the FIS has been slowed byCovid-19 I have no idea who our best racers are for the Olympic team. But I will watch the downhill and slalom events just to kind of get back up to speed. My wife loves the figure skating. I’ll watch some of that with her, but I have no enthusiasm for the games this year. A lot of that has to do with the fact that China is hosting.
We saw the Beijing Olympic venues in 2009. They’re impressive, but in a cold, sterile, Communist sort of way. The Chinese have accomplished a lot since the 1990s. We could admire them and be in friendly competition with them, but the CCP, like commies everywhere, want to demonstrate their superiority to democracy. They don’t care how ruthless they need to be to demonstrate that. So, they’ll have a carefully choreographed show that will be impressive, while outside the air is barely breathable and the landscape is dreary. I feel sorry for the rank-and-file Chinese people, they’re stuck. It concerns me that the party elite are much more competent than the old USSR elite.
J.J.,
“the CCP, like commies everywhere, want to demonstrate their superiority to democracy. They don’t care how ruthless they need to be to demonstrate that.”
Too blind to see the irony, their ruthlessness demonstrates the inferiority of what they champion. A superior ideology sells itself. Millions willing to break the law to come to America to partake of our freedoms and capitalism.
While China can’t pay people to imigrate to it.
“It concerns me that the party elite are much more competent than the old USSR elite.”
The party elite’s succeeding generations will become increasingly corrupt and incompetent. It happened to us and it will happen to them. Unearned success corrupts.
Eileen Gu, the American skier who has chosen to renounce her US citizenship to compete for China, seems to be the perfect symbol of these Olympics and our times. It used to be that all the Communist countries had to keep tight reins on their athletes lest they defect to the West. Now we have someone who would appear to have everything going for her, voluntarily selling out her country to be used as a propaganda tool by the murderous CCP. I guess you have to go where the money is.
Like many here, I don’t plan to watch a second of these games and haven’t watched for quite some time. When I was young I used to love the Olympics, particularly the Winter Games. Now I think its long past time to put an end to the Games.
Geoffrey B: “The party elite’s succeeding generations will become increasingly corrupt and incompetent. It happened to us and it will happen to them.”
Agreed. They were on their way until Xi became the Chairman. He is supposedly quite honest and earnest about his job. He won’t last forever and I’m sure there are many corruptocrats lying in wait.
We know next to nothing about China’s economic situation. Gordon Chang has been predicting their bankruptcy for many years now. Yet, they manage to keep all the balls in the air. NBC paid them billions for the TV rights, but not having spectators is going to be a big financial hit for China. The fact that the We Flu came out of there isn’t endearing them to the world either. I don’t think this is going to be the big PR event the CPC thought it would be.
I read the posts on the Internet and this one on the Olympics serially. Funny how there seems to be a similarity of evolution between the Internet and the Olympics. Started out small, with amateur participants, then grew as its popular appeal drew more people into participating and observing. Now, both the Internet and the Olympics are dominated by corporate/government interests, but popular interest is waning. One hopes the trend lines continue.
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“On a personal note – I stopped watching the Olympics years ago…and I used to love the Olympics. The political tone-deafness is part of it, I suppose, but for me it really started to go downhill when it stopped being limited to amateurs and became a glossy production number.” Neo
Same here for me and my husband.
“…wrote in the strongest terms that Jewish people and Black people should not be allowed to participate in the Games.”
Nobody tell Whoopi Goldberg.
Now, both the Internet and the Olympics are dominated by corporate/government interests, but popular interest is waning. One hopes the trend lines continue.
Our garbage elites will keep the show alive with funds from public treasuries, even if hardly anyone’s watching. It’s just crooked beyond belief. Should have been shut down when we figured out what East Germany was doing to its women athletes.
Here’s a suggestion: end the intersection of the commercial, philanthropic and government sectors in athletic endeavour. No public money for anything but arenas and fields (if that). Limit the affiliation between schools and sports to club sports only. End the issuance of athletic scholarships. Dissolve the NCAA, sell off its assets, and distribute the assets among commercial sports leagues already in operation. Issue business charters to each revenue-generating collegiate team, have them rent extant facilities or build their own, let them recruit whoever they care to, pay whatever employee compensation they care to, and affiliate with whichever senior grade professional team will have them as a farm team. And abolish the Olympics.
What Art said: Quit pretending the NFL farm teams run by colleges are just college kids who like to play ball on a team to celebrate the spirit of the good old Alma Mater. Same for some of the larger high school teams in Texas where the kids have had personal trainers since the sixth grade. ‘Sports in America’ James A. Michener written in 1976 https://www.nytimes.com/1976/06/27/archives/sports-in-america.html where he predicted a lot of this stuff and wanted see schools, from grade school through college provide sports programs for all students to participate in and develop habits for running, swimming and easy competition that they could be part of for the rest of their lives.
“Put the summer games in Greece and the winter games in Switzerland and cut down the number of sports to what it was in 1945.”
To echo Insty, where’s the opportunity for graft in that?
Also, the only Olympic broadcast I’ve watched in decades was QEII parachuting, in London.
From Wikipedia:
The NCAA dates its formation to two White House conferences convened by President Theodore Roosevelt in the early 20th century in response to repeated injuries and deaths in college football which had “prompted many college and universities to discontinue the sport.”[1] Following those White House meetings and the reforms which had resulted, Chancellor Henry MacCracken of New York University organized a meeting of 13 colleges and universities to initiate changes in football playing rules; at a follow-on meeting on December 28, 1905, in New York, 62 higher-education institutions became charter members of the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (IAAUS).[1] The IAAUS was officially established on March 31, 1906, and took its present name, the NCAA, in 1910.[1]
I can’t speak for skiing and other sports, but as a long time figure skater and fan the Olys seem pretty corrupt to me. Think unions and how they are really just cushy sinecures for the officials, with bribes on the side to bump up the deal. The International Skating Union in a nutshell. The athletes, their rights, health, and needs, are the last things on the officials’ minds. It won’t change, either, even with the loss of US viewership. The Chinese and the Russians will keep funding it.
The current judging system has so stripped the soul out of skating that, in a perverse way, I’m actually looking forward to seeing the Chinese give the Russians a run for their money (literally!) in skating. The cheating should go to a whole new level. That’ll be entertaining.
Never thought the day would come when I would not watch skating, let alone the Olympic events. But I barely tuned in to 2018, and Friday, when I saw the US team in the kiss and cry after Nathan’s skate – all masked up – that was it for me. Not going to bother to see which prepubescent Russian wins the Ladies (not) event this year.
Adolf Hitler was not Reich Chancellor in 1936. After the death of President Paul von Hindenburg in 1934, Chancellor Hitler combined the offices of President and Chancellor (effectively abolishing them) and he became “Fuhrer” meaning “Leader”. The 1936 Berlin Olympics was a major triumph for the Nazis as it “normalized” them to the world.- this despite the attempt to make it as if Hitler cared about Jesse Owens winning all those medals – Hitler could not care less, he got what he was looking for in the Berlin Olympics.
Actual viewing data seems to be kept scarce by Google and NBC appatchiks online.
But the Daily Caller reports that in the US it has been 55% down on opening day/night and two-thirds down compared with earlier Winter Olympics compared to last.
https://dailycaller.com/2022/02/04/tv-ratings-tank-olympics-communist-china/
A goodly portion of Americans apparently feel the same love for the CCP evident here.