April 10, 2008--Torched

I haven't "gotten" the Olympics for at least 20 years.

After the Cold War ended it lost most of its appeal. No longer do I care much about the medal count which in the past was thought to reveal the comparative strengths of Capitalism and Communism. No longer do we have the nasty pleasure of wondering if the gold-medal-winning Romanian shot putter was really a woman or was simply jazzed up on testosterone or had an extra X or Y chromosome.

Since then the Olympics reverted to what its modern incarnation had been all about--making money. For individual athletes (any semblance of amateurism has long since vanished) and the host countries.

The athletes of the world, though, still do put on a good show--especially during the opening and closing ceremonies, which on TV are the highest rated of all Olympic events. Not my thing--for this sort of entertainment I myself prefer Dancing With the Stars--but there you are. Millions tune in to watch all the banner and flag waving and to OD on the latest version of John Williams’ overwrought music.

But what I really don't get about the Olympics is the Torch. The obsession with it I mean.

I know that in ancient times a flame was kept burning during the time the games were underway and that this was thought to commemorate Prometheus’ theft of fire from Zeus. Good and meaningful stuff for the ancient Greeks, for whom, in addition to its religious significance, the fire had its practical side since the athletes competed while naked and the heat from it might also have helped keep them warm during chilly evenings. Unless, that is, something better was available to serve the same purpose.

However, what they now do with the Olympic Flame, which reappeared during the 1928 games, is pure marketing. And the fact that the flame relay was invented by the Nazi officials who hosted the notorious 1936 Summer Games makes the whole torch thing very suspect.

As I understand it, host country officials go to the place in Greece where this all began and from sunlight ignite kindling by using a parabolic mirror. From this they light a torch which is then passed to the first in a series of runners who spend months trundling it around the globe, touching down on all continents except, I assume, Antarctica, which as far as I know does not as yet have an Olympic team.

(How they get a lit flame on an airplane to fly it from Europe to the United States or Australia is another matter that I won't get into here since I am thinking about how many ounces of shampoo we’ll be allowed to take on the plane with us when we return to New York from Florida.)

Now of course, since the Olympics have become such a commercial success, it is also a place where politics is front and center. There is no better global showcase to put a wide range of issues before the media and thus the public. Case in point the current torch relay preceding the upcoming Summer Games in Beijing.

Human rights advocates, anti-globalization groups, and environmentalists are gearing up as diligently as the athletes are training since the global flame relay is an ideal opportunity to get their views into the headlines. Thus, when the flame arrived in San Francisco earlier this week it brought out an assortment of protestors. At least seven thousand at last count. One group, knowing their ancient Olympic tradition, did their protesting while in the buff. Many were so worked up that the Olympic Committee is considering eliminating the international part of the relay, confining it entirely to China—excluding Tibet of course.

To give you some idea of the kind of fervor surrounding this, here are the opening sentences from yesterday’s report in the NY Times. Note especially how the torch is made to sound almost human, as if it has a life of its own (italics added):

“The Olympic torch arrived from Paris in the wee hours Tuesday morning, exited out a side door and was escorted by motorcade to a downtown hotel. There it took a well-deserved break in a room complete with cable TV, room service and views of the Union Square shopping district.” (Full article linked below.)

And the protesting is working. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has indicated that he will not attend the opening ceremony, thus saving himself an endless evening; and even George Bush may not show up—the festivities wrap up way past his bedtime. But he has to be careful since all the debt he has run up during his presidency has been scooped up by the Chinese and the last thing he wants to see happen is for them to call it in before a Democrat is in the White House so he or she can be blamed for the full collapse of the dollar. There is serious talk that If he boycotts the opening ceremony the Chinese might decide to boycott the next multi-billion dollar T Bill auction.

The fact that I’m talking in this economically apocalyptical way is not a good thing. The Olympics are supposed to be about fun and games. Not global economic catastrophe. So why don't we just leave the poor torchbearers alone. We're in enough trouble as it is. And who knows, if the flame manages to make it to China unextinguished (something some of the protestors are attempting to do) and if he behaves himself the Chinese might let President Bush light the Olympic Flame in the big stadium. After all, it would be a way of thanking him since he had US taxpayers pay for its construction.