jennings rampage

Is it time for the modern pentathlon yet?

Rogge rips the wrong guy

Jacques Rogge is so bought, so compromised, the president of the IOC doesn’t have the courage to criticize China for telling a decade of lies to land itself these Olympic Games.

All the promises made to get these Games — on Tibet, Darfur, pollution, worker safety, freedom of expression, dissident rights — turned out to be phony, perhaps as phony as the Chinese gymnasts’ birthdates Rogge was way too slow to investigate.

One of the most powerful men in sports turned the world away from his complicity. Instead, he has flexed his muscles by unloading on a powerless sprinter from a small island nation.

Rogge’s ripping of Usain Bolt’s supposed showboating in two of the most electrifying gold-medal performances of these Games has to be one of the most ill-timed and gutless acts in the modern history of the Olympics.

Look, even as much as secretly rooted for widespread boycotts and societal upheaval and epic fail, I can’t apologize for my Olympic Fever. I’ve been a gigantic dork for the Olympics my entire life, and the unforgettable moments and obscure sports stimulate and reward my gigantic dorky brain. (Last night, I could not tear myself from the women’s 20k racewalk.) And change in China won’t come through isolation and refusing to engage, because we know how well that worked in Cuba, and China’s got 1.3 billion fucking people.

So I guess what I’m saying is, I expected this sort of crap from China, I knew that the Beijing Games would be just the beginning of the bright spotlight that starts the slow process of leading to the eventual time when we’re able to kinda think about what might happen one day when we’re ready to accept that deliberate and respectful changes are inevitable (in their due course). Of course the Chinese cheated in women’s gymnastics, of course they locked up peaceful protesters and sentenced old women to labor camps, of course they didn’t provide the access they promised, of course reporters can’t access the full Internet, of course they scared their people so shitless that the Olympic Village is a ghost town. This surprises no one.

But what surprises me I suppose only a little is just how complicit the IOC has been. Sure, the “Olympic movement” would have died had it not been for Peter Ueberroth selling out the 1984 Games and creating a quadrennial pile of cash that no good businessman could ignore, but to this point, old women haven’t been sentenced to labor camps to protect that pile of cash and make sure not a single bill flutters off the top. We can scoff at Cuba because they’re tiny and poor, but China has 1.3 billion fucking people, and we’d like very much to show them all our attractive logos.

I’m not going to be so naive to pretend that the Olympics on this scale would be possible without the part where companies pay up to put their logos next to the other logos, and honestly, I’m not the type to get bothered by the logos if I get my unforgettable moments and obscure sports. But would one person in charge grow a set and call China out on a little bit of this shit? Like, for just a minute? I’d settle for the closing ceremonies, Jacques — “Thank you for hosting these wonderful Games, the best yet, ohandstoptheshitalreadydouchebags, peace, I’m out, check your jock in Vancouver y’all, Iheartheytalkfunnybutatleasttheydon’tbeatoldwomen.”