Everybody seems to be in quite a dither about the Olympic Torch being doused twice today as it was run through the streets of Paris.
I certainly hope the irony is not lost on anyone that it was Adolf Hitler’s propaganda ministry that came up with the idea of running the Olympic Torch from Greece to the site of the Games for the 1936 Berlin Olympics. It was all part of the glorification of the Aryan supermen, with the direct implication that there was a link between Nazi Germany and the Olympian gods. Hitler himself was big on the idea that somehow the Germans had some sort of tie to the Spartans.
Of course, the IOC itself was run by a Francoist for twenty years, and even prior to that the long-time head of the U.S. Olympic Committee and head of the IOC, Avery Brundage, had direct business ties to Nazi Germany. So to pretend that the Olympics are somehow tainted by their association with Beijing and the Chinese government is a little disingenuous.
As a true testament to the 19th Century ideal of amateur competition, the Olympics ceased to be worthy of that consideration with the 1936 Games. When the Games resumed after World War II, the political propagandization and the proxy battles between the two sides of the Cold War carried the Games for another 30-odd years until the 1980 Games in Moscow. Since 1984, though, the Games have mutated into nothing but a commercial spectacle, deteriorating further and further along that path with each subsequent event. Protesting over China hosting the Games is too little, too late. China as the Next Big Superpower seems to me to be the perfect symbol of the triumph of unbridled capitalism and hypocritical symbolism. Dousing Hitler’s torch in the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe only seems fitting to me.
Dear Harvey, Pete, Barry, Kevin, and every other weathermonkey on Boston-area TV: Enough is enough. The fucking blizzard was THIRTY-TWO YEARS AGO. It’s time to stop trotting out the same blurry videotape of cars stuck on Rt. 128 that is older than some of the people who are actually on your broadcast, just so we [...]
It’s going to be a long two months waiting for the iPad to actually ship so that all the tech bloggers and their hangers-on will stop writing so much speculative bullshit about iT and turn their attention iNstead to some other thing that’s going to Change Life As We Know iT. Since you cannot click [...]
Please, please, PUH-LEEZE stop talking about “What do we call the last decade?” Nobody could come up with an acceptable choice ten years ago, and nobody’s going to come up with one now. “Aughties” and “Naughties” are contrived and stupid, and so is the very idea that anything wraps up all nice and neatly into [...]
