Olympic Clapping Hordes

I have to admit, I thought everything there was to be said about the Olympics had been. But in our March issue veteran Vancouver city reporter Frances Bula makes an oh-so-satisfying addition to the discussion.

The article argues that whatever you believed first about the Olympics is what you will continue to believe – regardless of any contradictory evidence. I highly recommend this great read, realizing full well that I’m shilling my own publication here.

I won’t go into the deep psychology of the whole business, first because Frances does a very nice job in her piece, and second because I’m altogether unqualified. But I can’t help adding a few ancillary thoughts about the contradictory mindsets at work with Vancouver’s Olympics.

First, consider the following phrase: Olympics as con game. Shocked? I certainly hope not. It’s hard to imagine a public event more laced with blatant self-interest. Politicians get a smiling, clapping public (their bread and butter), businesses get hordes of customers coming to town (and, more importantly, their vacation budgets) and developers get the biggest publicity boost imaginable (they are essentially running the show, after all).

So yeah, the whole spectacle is clearly one big marketing play for the big powers – but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, in business we fundamentally believe that a controlled level of greedy pursuit in a society results in a net benefit. So of course we don’t buy into all the shiny spin about brotherhood and sportsmanship – doesn’t mean we can’t still love the Olympics; doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea. So there’s one rationalization at play.

Of course there are many out there who fundamentally oppose the Games. They bring up the obvious self-interest at play but take that argument one step further: while the powerful benefit, the poor and marginalized suffer. Now, I’m not going to weigh in on whether this argument is right or wrong, choosing instead to slide off into a safer and, in my mind, more interesting question: Why does it take the Olympics to make us worry about the poor and marginalized? Because, it demonstrably has. Considering the awful way we’ve handled so many social problems in this province (addiction, the mentally ill, homelessness, Aboriginal health and welfare, the list goes on) and just look what’s happened to the debates on these issues in B.C. post-bid.

So while opponents decry the effects of the Olympics, they have also gained a platform for issues that, in many cases, rightly deserve serious attention. The juicy contradiction there is that we likely wouldn’t be dealing with some of the critical social issues that are now on the table without a major international event staring us in the face. Looks like a lot of Olympics opponents own the show some gratitude, and how does one juggle that irony? Clearly there’s some more double-think going on. As you can tell, I’m not going to come out for or against the Olympics (at least not in this blog) but rather revel in its amusing mixed blessings and confused moralities, doing the same as many right now, I think: just smirking from the sidelines.