Olympics

I heard the first mention of a boycott of the Olympics yesterday, in connection with the operations of Chinese troops in Tibet. The last time we did it was 1980, when we boycotted the Moscow Olympics because the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan in 1979 (though to hear them say it, they were "invited" in by a "friendly regime" to put down "bandits"). It took a long time for US policy to arrive at anything approaching sophistication in Afghanistan, and in some ways the fruits of our efforts were decidedly unfortunate - would a lame socialist government backstopped by limitless Soviet military resources and scant fiscal resources really be worse than the Taliban? And was playing a role, however incidental and inadvertent, in the formation of al Qaeda something we really should have done?

Water under the bridge, of course, but for all that, our boycott of the Moscow Olympics did annoy the Soviets. They pretended not to show it, but the "asterisk Olympics" irritated them. They didn't pour all that concrete and beautify all those drab Stalinist apartment blocks to please their own people; they did it because they hoped to look good on TV in front of all those non-aligned folk who the Soviets figured would be easily gulled by fancy new stadiums and not-so-drab Stalinist apartment buildings. I think that my favorite piece of Soviet Olympic cheesitude was the VDNKh, or "Exposition of Economic Achievement" that was built during Olympic Fever and was supposed to showcase the efficiency of socialist endeavor. Back then it was the Soviet equivalent of the Smithsonian, a glittering expanse of cars, rocket engines, spidery spacecraft, generators, diesel engines and other gewgaws of socialist endeavor, all of it assembled beneath the munificent but to my eye slightly wistful gaze of the largest poster of Yuri Gagarin I've ever seen. I'm told that nowadays they've dragged all the exhibits and displays out and they sell used cars and cassette tapes in the main hall.*

The Chinese are doing the same thing, of course. The Olympics are an expression of Chinese power, imperium, gravitas, cultural supremacy, what have you. And I have no desire to be implicated in them. I don't know if the US government (or any other government) will boycott the Olympics for any particular reason, but I believe I will. You put propylene glycol in my toothpaste, poison my dog, poison my kids, and spy on my country, and you expect me to give a rat's ass about your Olympics? I think not.

And it's a pity, because I usually enjoy the Olympics. I'm sort of a tyro when it comes to the ins and outs of track and field events, and the hyperabundance (no other word will do) of ice skating coverage in the Winter Olympics leaves me - wait for it - cold. And there are always those pointless arguments about whether, say, synchronized swimming is more of a sport than rhythmic gymnastics. But the notion of the Olympics in a general sense I support, and who can not help but by amused (at the very least) by things like Eddie the Eagle and the Jamaican bobsled team and the downhill skiier from Morocco?

But when the Olympics turn into another glittering aspect of a given country's propaganda offensive, I can find better things to do with my time. I wish them success - without me.

* Though I think the strangest bit of Olympic doodadery I saw in the USSR was in the lobby of the airport in Bratsk, one of those places where one side of the runway was a civil airport and the other side was a bunch of blue-grey MiG-25 interceptors in hardened revetments. Inside the lobby was an enormous thumb about eight to ten feet tall, made of concrete if my tappings of it were any guide, and spray-painted bright metallic gold. Just an erect thumb, nothing more. No hand, no thumbscrew, no explanation of any sort for how this gargantuan golden thumb came to be in the airport lobby looming over the passengers like some kind of bizarre Parthian phallus. When asked, our Intourist guide suggested (with notable lack of confidence) that it was "related to the Olympics." I referred to it thereafter as the Golden Thumb of Socialist Endeavour.