Olympic Games
Like third graders playing Recess Soccer. There is a ball out there, it’s being chased and kicked around, it’s generally rolling in the right direction, but the structures of the game are haphazard. What is like this game?
The celebration and hullabo about Obama’s fight to win the Olympic Games for Chicago. The contortions of Obama’s Republican opposition to fit the unsuccessful sell into a broader narrative about a failed presidency. This is, to use Charles Krauthammer’s phrase for the last administration, “Obama Derangement Syndrome” at work. That being said, the liberal reaction to the right’s transparent political posturing is off as well. The taunts do not quite up. They’re rooting against America. I do not like the word “Un-American”.
There are several reasons we don’t particularly want the Olympic Games — I suspect the benefit is a bit lower for Chicago and the costs a bit higher than for Rio. Some problems as expressed by “The Left“. Some problems expressed by some Libertarians. There was a Weekly Standard blog post or other which expressed the most crucial part: the Olympic Games should be put in various spots around the globe — the continent South America has yet to have one. Of course, a liberal blogger charged in and decried some ideological hypocrisy: “Isn’t that a little redistributive?“ Which I found unfair: from a purely business concern, it makes sense for an organization whose image is based on being International to throw themselves into “Emerging Markets”, and I don’t think that’s intellectually inconsistent — unless we’re playing a stupid game of loosely structured Playground Soccer.
I also think Joe Scarborough is playing a bit of a game in his role as “Conservative Critic of the Conservative Movement”. This strikes me as reaching for the low hanging fruit. He is free from the testy things of Contrarianism. I just ducked over to Member of Congress Joseph Cao’s page to see if he posted on it — no, but he did “reach for the low hanging fruit” with posting a press release defending Obama’s right to talk to school children — another recent game of Not Terribly Structured Playground Soccer. A tempest in a teapot. The real story from that trip to Coppenhagen was that Obama had a long conversation with General General McChrystal about Afghanistan. That is going to have a bigger impact on US policy than a push for the Olympic Games, and I hope Obama got some other things done on the plane ride to and back as well.