Trouble, trouble at the Olympics
By Wes Pruden
PrudenPolitics.com
Mitt Romney, the businessman with an eye for what's
going wrong, can't resist the temptation to critique
what he sees. A cliche-monger would call him a
"problem-solver." Others would call him a pain in
the neck.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee
arrived in London this week, took a quick look
around and observed the obvious, that neither our
English cousins nor the London Olympics appear to be
quite ready for prime time.
The man credited with saving the Salt Lake City
winter Olympics called the well-known problems with
security, traffic and a threatened strike by
immigration officers "a bit disconcerting." The very
word "disconcerting" is prim enough to suit the
diplomats who know which finger to crook over a cup
of tea, but not David Cameron, the prime minister
who scolded Mr. Romney for his plain language. Many
of the thousands of reporters in town naturally
called Mr. Romney's remarks a "gaffe," and suited up
in their goggles and flying suits for duty with the
dreaded Gaffe Patrol.
A
true gaffe is when a politician unexpectedly tells
it like it really is, so this may be an authentic
gaffe. The run-up to the London Olympics has been a
cluster of migraines for nearly everyone. They're
enough to make an Olympian forget where he put his
shot.
The prime minister, in his return fire, cited all
the good things his government has done to make the
London Olympics succeed, such as firing up enough
enthusiasm to recruit 8,000 "ambassadors" to be nice
to visitors, and sending the Olympic flame on a
70-day journey through the isles on its way to the
stadium for Friday's opening ceremony.
Even Mr. Romney mellowed his critique of Britons as
the Olympic torch, which originated at the site of
the original Olympics in Athens, approached the
stadium. "Do they come together and celebrate the
Olympic moment?" he asked. "That's something which
we only find out when the games actually begin." He
made nice as well with 10 Downing Street, while
slipping the needle to Barack Obama, telling a
fund-raiser rally for Americans in London that he is
"looking forward to the bust of Winston Churchill
being in the Oval Office again."
The bronze, by Sir Jacob Epstein, was lent to the
White House in 200l at the request of President
George W. Bush, an admirer of all things British,
and sent back to London at the request of Mr. Obama,
who is not much of an admirer of many things
British.
Controversy is nothing new to the Olympics, which
has from its origins, renewed with the founding of
the modern Olympics in 1896, nourished the conceit
that the games are a force for peace, justice and
other nifty things. "The day [the games are]
introduced the cause of peace will have received a
new and strong ally," said Baron Pierre de
Coubertin, the French organizer on the day the
modern games opened.
Not much peace has happened since, though the
Olympian bureaucracy still smears such treacle on
the games. "Through the Olympic spirit we can
instill brotherhood, respect, fair play, gender
equality and even combat doping," Jacques Rogge, the
current president of the International Olympic
Committee, said during the planning of the London
games. Not a lot of all that so far, either.
"Far from finding 'a new and strong ally' in the
games," writes the historian Andrew Roberts in the
Wall Street Journal, "the cause of world peace has
been betrayed by the International Olympic Committee
time and again." He cites the example of the Berlin
Olympics in 1936, awarded two years before Hitler
came to power but which der Fuehrer tried to make a
showcase for his racist theories. He was thwarted by
Jesse Owens, who gave the name "a goin' Jesse" new
meaning by winning four gold medals while Hitler
watched sullenly from the grandstand.
Though those games were awarded before Hitler came
to power in 1933, Mr. Roberts observes that 114
anti-semitic laws were put on the books by 1936, and
the International Olympic Committee resisted
withdrawing the games from Berlin. Avery Brundage,
an American who chaired the committee, argued that
since only 12 Jews had ever participated in the
Olympics nobody could blame the Nazis if no Jews
showed up for the '36 games.
This year the committee refused to make any
recognition of the 1972 Olympics, where Palestinian
guerrillas killed 11 Israeli athletes in Munich.
President Obama joined the international demand for
some sort of remembrance in London. The committee,
in the name of world peace, said no.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Some world, some peace.
Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington
Times.