CSotD: London Callifornicating
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Cartoon Movement is hosting an interesting look at the London Olympics by Tom Humberstone. It's a quick read — 11 pages — but a nice journalistic contrast with the combination of shallow triumphalism and goopy advertorial coverage you're apt to see elsewhere.
I was a fan of the Olympics back when they seemed to be a sports event. I'm not sure how much of the change is my maturation and their degradation, but I don't remember them being 80 percent features and 20 percent events, nor do I remember the coverage being so heavily based on pre-chosen stars in the past.
I do remember that, when Nadia Comăneci exploded onto the scene in women's gymnastics, it took a day or two before anyone knew she wasn't Nadia Comaneechy.
It's been awhile since the Olympics have served up any surprises, and even longer since they served up anything I'd recognize as sports.
But maybe I'm missing a Title IX-style shift. I remember a party during the 88 Olympics in which the guys were all standing around talking about this and that while the women were huddled around the TV watching gymnastics. Maybe I've just tuned out because the Olympics have become a women's sports event. (Not a joke; a sincere observation. Well, not that sincere.)
Still, when I lived near the Canadian border, I watched a fair amount of Olympic coverage because they would do crazy things like cover the best event currently happening rather than the event currently happening in which one of their own athletes was likely to medal, or, failing that, taped coverage of an event in which one of their own athletes had already medalled while they were running a feature about an athlete whose second cousin's husband's aunt had cancer.
And, when my son was in San Diego during an Olympic Games, he watched the Mexican coverage, sacrificing knowing that they were saying in return for getting to watch actual sporting events.
But Humberstone's piece is not about the integrity or focus of the sports themselves, but, rather, about the impact of the Games on London. And I'm with him there.
When I first lived in Colorado, there was a successful grassroots movement to stop the 1976 Olympics, which had been awarded to Denver. It had nothing to do with sports; even countercultural Coloradans are jocks. It had to do with degradation of the site, economic costs and not letting the runningdogs of rampant development control the future of the state.
They didn't stop the Olympics, but they stopped them from being hosted in Denver, by forcing a referendum in which the voters rejected the Games, which then were put on by Innsbruck. And that was the goal: Not to stop the Games, because who cares? But to stop the Games from happening in Colorado, because they did care about that.
Of course, in them thar days, the people with the "Stop the Olympics" and "Don't Californicate Colorado" bumperstickers were of an age at which they still knew how to pass out leaflets, to rally mainstream support and to organize meaningful collective actions. This was a long time ago.
And get off my lawn. But they did stop the Olympics, and who'd a-thunk it?
Mind you, they didn't stop them in time for the poor Greek fellow who had owned the Olympic Restaurant in Denver for years, thinking, in his poor, naive, befuddled way, that the word "Olympic" had something to do with his Greek heritage. Silly man. It's a trademark, and he had to change the name of his restaurant.
And that's a topic covered in Humberstone's piece: The real gold medal goes to the Olympic lawyers, who, among journalists and advertising people are considered to be on a viciousness level with the Dr. Suess and Disney lawyers, and who have Congress backing their rapacious defense of terms like "Olympic" or "Summer Games." As a journalist/educator, I've had to work around those restrictions, but now Humberstone reports they've now decided they also own "2012," which is going to make life difficult for the next five months or so, isn't it?
Anyway, go read the piece. The Olympics are an interesting microcosm in which is revealed the death grip that corporate greed has on us all, and Humberstone does a nice job of laying it out.
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