Yayy! The Olympics Are Here Again! (But, Rio, We've Got a Problem . . . )
Ah, yes. The Olympics! That wonderful and historic tribute to amateur athletes and their skills and their purity, descended down from the very cradle of democracy and civilization as we know it, classic Hellenic Greece. How inspiring, how wonderful, to see these well-trained, idealistic, self-sacrificing pillars of the youth of our world, casting aside all nationalism, conflicts, and xenophobia, to compete as one. Only twenty-six miles to Marathon!
Uh, but wait. I think there are some clouds on the horizon - - and some gunk (and body parts) in the water, and some blood in the streets, and a convocation of more malevolent microbes than ever to gather in recent memory under one polluted sky.With a little help from readily available news sources like ABC and Reuters, among others, let's see what's going on other than the classic and historic Olympic contests of women's beach volleyball and skateboarding:
Starting with Brazil itself (before we put the IOC under a looking glass), I've heard rumors of just a tad of corruption and back-stabbing (and yeah, some front-stabbing too). It's said, for example, that five (only five!) construction firms are and have been building virtually all of the eleven billion dollars' worth of "venues" for the games (la! The Games!) and the necessary infrastructure to support those "venues" and the games themselves (trains and boats and plains); and there is talk of the possibility (mind you, just a possibility) that some bribes have been paid to the local and municipal and state (Rio de Janeiro is a state in Brazil, and its capital city is . . . well, you know) and federal shot-callers who decided what got built, where, when, and by whom.
The country's president - - the first woman to hold the position, one Dilma Rousseff, has lately been impeached, for (guess what) dipping her populist hand in the country's books of account while in the process of "bringing the games" to Rio and Brazil, in order to make the place seem economically stable enough to be able to afford them (which is to say, The Olympics themselves), and one can only wonder why she was so fervent about it. Oh, I get it: national pride, yes? Nothing like self-interest or self-dealing, huh?
There's also talk of just a teeny-weeny little security- and public safety problem (oh, no! Can't be!). There are more armed police and military in the streets of every Olympic city (and they stretch all across the country) than there are stray dogs and cats and chickens and goats, and there are millions - - no, billions of those. People ("private citizens," are they now?) are getting robbed and ripped literally at every corner. There's an aerial tramway to take visitors on a nice, idyllic ride over the favelas (slums, but really, the worst of the worst), so that people can, as one article put it, "gawk" down at them, kind of like when El Gallo in the famous off-Broadway play "The Fantastics" admonished the ingénue young girl he was seducing to " . . . put up the mask! The mask!" so that, through her eyes, everything was oh, so lovely! Competing athletes are finding that the accommodations in "The Olympic Village" are unfinished, or worse: plumbing deficiencies, lack or furniture, or simply insufficient space. (Our American super-jocks on the B-ball team have come up with a work-around: they've pooled together a few chunks of their multi-million dollar salaries and have chartered a cruise boat to live on, which they're keeping moored in Rio's harbor, far from the madding (and unwashed) crowds.)
It may long since have been safe to go back into the water off of Montauk (the shark went south), but it sure as hell isn't safe even to get near the water in Rio (including Copacabana Beach, where the girl from Ipanema is still lolling around in her string/thong bikini): there's raw sewage pouring into the ocean, and the bay that's intended to be the principal site of the water-sports contests, and both competitors and tourists are being warned not to go in. (No, the competitors are being lied to, and told that it's safe - - as long as they wear masks over their mouths. Can you see it? Michael Phelps wearing a hoodie while doing the medley?) And the body parts. I can't wait to hear the first TV announcer say that somebody's won by a head . . . A new event has been added: mosquito-swatting, in the hopes that that's the way, finally, to deal with the country's national virus, Zika. No medals there, though, just bejeweled fly-swatters (and the jewels are fake, though the manufacturer charged for the real things, with a little help from some friends at IOC). That's a bonus, as it were, in addition to the highest per capita incidence of STDs anyplace in the western world, anyway: that's the Brazilian way of accomplishing population control. The plan is to infect all of the indigenous and aboriginal peoples in and around the Amazon basin (the Brazilians think those natives can't resist white-ish young women) and wipe them out incrementally, kind of like Columbus and his brave crew did when they "conquered" their brave new world.
And then there's the redoubtable IOC itself, and its sub-agencies: forget, for now, the craziness of the prior games in Tokyo (pay-offs), Russia (doping at home, in Moscow) and Beijing (doping) and before that, Seoul and Mexico City. Just look at the stern, forceful, effective way it's dealt with the all-but-universal current doping problems . Russia has been exposed this time around as actually having used the FSB (the successor to the KGB) to further and protect state-sponsored doping across the board: track and field, obviously, but also swimming, hell, even equestrian events (stoned ponies, right?). Secret doors and hidden panels in the walls of gyms and work-out rooms. The switching (by agents, for God's sake) of urine samples. And how has IOC and its country-level surrogates handled it? Well, they've all said (with but a few individual exceptions)"Never mind! It's okay. Go ahead. Come out to play!"
In April, just after the torch was lit in Greece, an absolutely-unheard of tidal wave came ashore off of Rio and ripped up the bicycle lane created just for the games (for a measly twelve mil). The stalwart and fatalistic Brazilians don't believe in omens. Bet some of them are rethinking their smugness, now.
Uh, but wait. I think there are some clouds on the horizon - - and some gunk (and body parts) in the water, and some blood in the streets, and a convocation of more malevolent microbes than ever to gather in recent memory under one polluted sky.With a little help from readily available news sources like ABC and Reuters, among others, let's see what's going on other than the classic and historic Olympic contests of women's beach volleyball and skateboarding:
Starting with Brazil itself (before we put the IOC under a looking glass), I've heard rumors of just a tad of corruption and back-stabbing (and yeah, some front-stabbing too). It's said, for example, that five (only five!) construction firms are and have been building virtually all of the eleven billion dollars' worth of "venues" for the games (la! The Games!) and the necessary infrastructure to support those "venues" and the games themselves (trains and boats and plains); and there is talk of the possibility (mind you, just a possibility) that some bribes have been paid to the local and municipal and state (Rio de Janeiro is a state in Brazil, and its capital city is . . . well, you know) and federal shot-callers who decided what got built, where, when, and by whom.
The country's president - - the first woman to hold the position, one Dilma Rousseff, has lately been impeached, for (guess what) dipping her populist hand in the country's books of account while in the process of "bringing the games" to Rio and Brazil, in order to make the place seem economically stable enough to be able to afford them (which is to say, The Olympics themselves), and one can only wonder why she was so fervent about it. Oh, I get it: national pride, yes? Nothing like self-interest or self-dealing, huh?
There's also talk of just a teeny-weeny little security- and public safety problem (oh, no! Can't be!). There are more armed police and military in the streets of every Olympic city (and they stretch all across the country) than there are stray dogs and cats and chickens and goats, and there are millions - - no, billions of those. People ("private citizens," are they now?) are getting robbed and ripped literally at every corner. There's an aerial tramway to take visitors on a nice, idyllic ride over the favelas (slums, but really, the worst of the worst), so that people can, as one article put it, "gawk" down at them, kind of like when El Gallo in the famous off-Broadway play "The Fantastics" admonished the ingénue young girl he was seducing to " . . . put up the mask! The mask!" so that, through her eyes, everything was oh, so lovely! Competing athletes are finding that the accommodations in "The Olympic Village" are unfinished, or worse: plumbing deficiencies, lack or furniture, or simply insufficient space. (Our American super-jocks on the B-ball team have come up with a work-around: they've pooled together a few chunks of their multi-million dollar salaries and have chartered a cruise boat to live on, which they're keeping moored in Rio's harbor, far from the madding (and unwashed) crowds.)
It may long since have been safe to go back into the water off of Montauk (the shark went south), but it sure as hell isn't safe even to get near the water in Rio (including Copacabana Beach, where the girl from Ipanema is still lolling around in her string/thong bikini): there's raw sewage pouring into the ocean, and the bay that's intended to be the principal site of the water-sports contests, and both competitors and tourists are being warned not to go in. (No, the competitors are being lied to, and told that it's safe - - as long as they wear masks over their mouths. Can you see it? Michael Phelps wearing a hoodie while doing the medley?) And the body parts. I can't wait to hear the first TV announcer say that somebody's won by a head . . . A new event has been added: mosquito-swatting, in the hopes that that's the way, finally, to deal with the country's national virus, Zika. No medals there, though, just bejeweled fly-swatters (and the jewels are fake, though the manufacturer charged for the real things, with a little help from some friends at IOC). That's a bonus, as it were, in addition to the highest per capita incidence of STDs anyplace in the western world, anyway: that's the Brazilian way of accomplishing population control. The plan is to infect all of the indigenous and aboriginal peoples in and around the Amazon basin (the Brazilians think those natives can't resist white-ish young women) and wipe them out incrementally, kind of like Columbus and his brave crew did when they "conquered" their brave new world.
And then there's the redoubtable IOC itself, and its sub-agencies: forget, for now, the craziness of the prior games in Tokyo (pay-offs), Russia (doping at home, in Moscow) and Beijing (doping) and before that, Seoul and Mexico City. Just look at the stern, forceful, effective way it's dealt with the all-but-universal current doping problems . Russia has been exposed this time around as actually having used the FSB (the successor to the KGB) to further and protect state-sponsored doping across the board: track and field, obviously, but also swimming, hell, even equestrian events (stoned ponies, right?). Secret doors and hidden panels in the walls of gyms and work-out rooms. The switching (by agents, for God's sake) of urine samples. And how has IOC and its country-level surrogates handled it? Well, they've all said (with but a few individual exceptions)"Never mind! It's okay. Go ahead. Come out to play!"
In April, just after the torch was lit in Greece, an absolutely-unheard of tidal wave came ashore off of Rio and ripped up the bicycle lane created just for the games (for a measly twelve mil). The stalwart and fatalistic Brazilians don't believe in omens. Bet some of them are rethinking their smugness, now.
posted by DLWMiami at 3:50 PM
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