American Idle

Today, the Olympic Torch Relay for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics has come to San Francisco. Right now, a few hundred yards from where I’m writing this, the torch is traveling down the Embarcadero.
During lunch I went down to justin Herman plaza which is where the relay iss scheduled to end and there’s a sea of people, media trucks and protestors.
Look, I understand that many people in the world have problems with the way the Chinese operate. I do. I want Tibet to be free as much as anyone (outside of the Tibetans and Richard Gere, I suppose) and I think the Chinese human rights record and its treatment of the environment is abysmal.
However, this is the Olympics and the Olympic ideal is that the participants put aside their problems with each other to compete. It’s about athletics and the spirit of competition, not politics. Certainly if the ancient Greeks could lay down their arms (see below) and have a cease fire so that athletes could travel to and from Olympia in safety, we can put aside our differencse so that the athletes who have worked so hard, dreaming of competing in the Olympics can go to Beijing.

At this point, the only people who really get hurt by all this talk of boycotts and the many protests of the torch relay, is the athletes and the spectators. We were wrong to boycott the Olympics the 1980 in Moscow. It set a horrible precident where, in the following Olympiad, the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc countries didn’t attend the LA games in 1984. Equally wrong. And we’d be equally wrong now.
If people have a problem with the where the Olympics are, they should direct their anger at the IOC, the International Olympic Committe and the many corporate sponsors who facilitate the games. They are ones who decide where the games will take place. Once it’s been decided, let the athletes and the spectators enjoy the spirit of competition and the spectacle of international sport.
Today, there’s only 120 days until the start of the games. I’m psyched!

Travelling to Olympia involved a long journey across warring territories. Therefore, two months before the Games began, the Hellanodikai, who organized the Games, declared a holy truce between Greek cities. At that moment, all wars were supposed to cease. The truce was also designed to protect the athletes during their journey home, which could sometimes last several months. Evidence that the truce was observed is found in the fact that Olympia was the only Greek city never to build walls to defend itself. During the truce, no prisoners were executed.
The ancient truce was sacred because it was necessary for the free movement of all participants.
The literal meaning of the Greek word for truce, ékécheiria, is “laying down of arms”.
(from Peace and the Olympics)