Spring Break
Olympic money trumps Olympic integrity
Derek Simons
Issue date: 3/31/08 Section: Forum
The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games are coming to a TV near you soon - a very carefully controlled TV.
As protests continue in Tibet against Chinese opression, the all-powerful machinery of the economic market has moved into high gear. Nothing must touch the edifying world-wide show of Olympic fair play and athletic endeavor. Please don't speak of "boycotts."
That's so 1980.
Full reports about the crackdown in Tibet are hard to come by. All foreign journalists have been expelled from the country, pardon me, "autonomous region." What has filtered out speaks of at least 140 dead. The most recent photos in The New York Times carried an editor's note stating the photographer (a "tourist") had requested he or she not be identified.
It was announced last week that, during the Games, TV crews will be prohibited from broadcasting from Tiananmen Square. Too risky - some foolhardy onlooker might hold up a protest banner.
The Chinese government, which maintains what is perhaps the world's most highly-sophisticated Internet censorship, has only one difficult moment left to control: medal ceremonies. That's where the International Olympic Committee steps in to help. Remember Tommie Smith and John Carlos and Mexico City in 1968? For their fists raised in the Black Power salute, the two were expelled from the Games.
So what is the democracy-loving U.S. government doing about the situation? Not much.
The United States is financing massive borrowing for its own never-ending military initiatives with Chinese cash. Chinese support of the Sudanese government's atrocities in Darfur is annoying, but certainly not worthy of having to raise taxes in the U.S. - not in an election year - and oil has yet to be discovered in Tibet.
The Dalai Lama was recently awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. That's pretty much where official U.S. love stops. Bush has called on Chinese leaders to talk to the Dalai Lama without insisting China satisfy any preconditions in the human rights department. This is the same Bush who won't talk to some other world leaders without their prior total capitulation.
As protests continue in Tibet against Chinese opression, the all-powerful machinery of the economic market has moved into high gear. Nothing must touch the edifying world-wide show of Olympic fair play and athletic endeavor. Please don't speak of "boycotts."
That's so 1980.
Full reports about the crackdown in Tibet are hard to come by. All foreign journalists have been expelled from the country, pardon me, "autonomous region." What has filtered out speaks of at least 140 dead. The most recent photos in The New York Times carried an editor's note stating the photographer (a "tourist") had requested he or she not be identified.
It was announced last week that, during the Games, TV crews will be prohibited from broadcasting from Tiananmen Square. Too risky - some foolhardy onlooker might hold up a protest banner.
The Chinese government, which maintains what is perhaps the world's most highly-sophisticated Internet censorship, has only one difficult moment left to control: medal ceremonies. That's where the International Olympic Committee steps in to help. Remember Tommie Smith and John Carlos and Mexico City in 1968? For their fists raised in the Black Power salute, the two were expelled from the Games.
So what is the democracy-loving U.S. government doing about the situation? Not much.
The United States is financing massive borrowing for its own never-ending military initiatives with Chinese cash. Chinese support of the Sudanese government's atrocities in Darfur is annoying, but certainly not worthy of having to raise taxes in the U.S. - not in an election year - and oil has yet to be discovered in Tibet.
The Dalai Lama was recently awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. That's pretty much where official U.S. love stops. Bush has called on Chinese leaders to talk to the Dalai Lama without insisting China satisfy any preconditions in the human rights department. This is the same Bush who won't talk to some other world leaders without their prior total capitulation.
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