The bar has been raised to an impossible height. While innovative the human price had to be high with 25,000 people working night and day for more than a year The 29th Summer Olympiad ended with the same ritualistic, disciplined, spectacle and fanfare as they began. It was stultifyingly precise at every turn. Not one cue missed. Everything with a surgeon’s precision.
Listening to the BBC commentary, the director of the opening and closing ceremonies complained that “working in the West was so difficult because of unions regulating how long people can work and people needing breaks.” Brrrr…
Besides that, what struck me was the lack of pure, unbridled celebration and joy, pasted on smiles and a military precision to every aspect of the entire program. These Olympics were a huge athletic and financial success. NBC, the American broadcaster, made millions on the Games and the corporate partners are all benefitting from the spectacle.
Human rights were not allowed to raise their head at all. The three official protest parks were empty and of the 80-official police requests to hold a protest, 77 were “resolved” and two key dissidents were taken away in a car and never again seen. The three unresolved protesters were also nowhere to be seen.
Indeed a campaign to have the 18-official sponsors speak out about abuses of Chinese workers fell on deaf ears. Even the American protesters held for a week in Chinese jails were released at request of the US Ambassador and deported.
Games are over, bye-bye now.
As for the athletes, golden man Michael Phelps was making $5 million dollars a year before the Games and winning eight now means he will make 10x that amount. The rest of the achievers will do well enough. Today Slate Magazine ran an article saying Phelps won only seven medals and perhaps the .0001 second victory may not have been.
Corporate sponsors will not rock the boat there either. So the Games will sneak out of town and it remains business as usual in Beijing.
The ParaOlympics will be interesting to watch because not as many attend those and we’ll see how big a deal human rights are allowed to become in September.
Not holding my breath.
