08:55 am
(No) Fun and Games: The Controlympics
I’ll have a longer post later this morning on the Olympics, but I wanted to share the following story, related by BBC correspondent Nick Bryant, about the Sydney Olympics:
One of my favourite yarns from the Sydney Olympics concerns the thin blue line painted onto the roads as a guide for runners in the marathon. In the middle of the night, as most of Sydney slept, someone armed with a brush and a can of blue paint decided the route was in need of a detour - and redirected it into a nearby pub.
Now contrast that with this story in The New York Times:
Chinese officials have thrown an almost smothering blanket of security across this capital of 17 million in preparation for the start of the Olympic Games on Friday. Above all else, Chinese leaders say, these Olympics will be “safe.”
…[I]n Beijing, the city is edging toward war footing. More than 34,000 military personnel and 74 airplanes, 47 helicopters and 33 navy ships have been deployed, said Col. Tian Yixiang, director of the military affairs department in the Olympic security command center. The Chinese government has also been installing tens of thousands of surveillance cameras on lamp poles and in Internet cafes and bars.
“Safe,” maybe, but fun? Not gonna happen. If Chinese security sees people having fun, they are under instructions to deport them immediately. If Sydney was the most fun you could have at the Games, Beijing is going to be the exact opposite — the no fun Games. You will only have fun if we say you are to have fun, and then you will have fun now.
To put it another way, if you were in a bar with a guy who spends his life surfing and a guy who works airport security, which one would you rather hang out with?
Welcome to the Controlympics.
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