Wingers revel in America’s Olympic defeat
How far have we fallen as a nation when an entire political movement roots against its own country? Pathetic. Congratulations to Rio and all, but any American who isn’t even a little bit sad that Chicago didn’t get the 2016 Olympics, even after President Obama personally made a last minute sales pitch, really ought to check his or her “patriotism” compass to make sure it’s working. If the right is so determined for this president to fail that they are even prepared to root against America, then perhaps its time they all moved to Rio. And good riddance.
Meanwhile, the politics of Olympic site selection probably had more to do with regional politics than with President Obama. Per the AP:
Rio spoke to IOC members’ consciences: the city argued that it was simply unfair that South America has never hosted the games, while Europe, Asia and North America have done so repeatedly.
“It is a time to address this imbalance,” Brazil’s charismatic president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, told the IOC’s members before they delivered their verdict. “It is time to light the Olympic cauldron in a tropical country.”
The final result was decisive: Rio beat Madrid by 66 votes to 32. Chicago got just 18 votes in the first round, with Tokyo squeezing into the second round with 22. Madrid was leading after the first round with 28 votes, while Rio had 26.
In the second round, Tokyo was eliminated with just 20 votes. Madrid got 29, qualifying it for the final round face-off with Rio, which by then already had a strong lead, with 46 votes.
Beating three rich, more developed nations that had all previously held the games represented a giant, morale-boosting coup for Brazil, an emerging nation bounding up the ranks of the world’s biggest economies but which still has millions of people living in poverty. Rio is known as much for its crime-ridden slums as for its stunning natural beauty.
Silva, a bearded former union leader, disappeared into a huge group hug with the joyous Rio team after IOC president Jacques Rogge announced the city’s name. Football great Pele had tears in his eyes. Silva wept into a white handkerchief at a post-victory news conference. Brazil will now hold the world’s two biggest sporting events in the space of just two years: in 2014, it is organizing the World Cup.
Chicago is obviously heartbroken, and the snub seems all the more strange, since McDonald’s (based in Chicago) is a major Olympics sponsor. If you read the entire AP story, it seems likely that large Asian and European blocs got together to ice the U.S. out, and there seems to be a feeling that the U.S. is too security-conscious, perhaps not schooled enough in the European style of presentation, to have gotten the games:
The biggest bloc of voters on the IOC — 46 — are Europeans. The IOC’s last two experiences in the United States were bad: the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics were sullied by a bribery scandal and logistical problems and a bombing hit the 1996 Games in Atlanta.
Obama had held out the enticing prospect of a Chicago games helping to reconnect the United States with the world after the presidency of George W. Bush. He told the IOC earlier Friday that the “full force of the White House” would be applied so “visitors from all around the world feel welcome and will come away with a sense of the incredible diversity of the American people.”
Now, Chicago can only rue what might have been. And Obama’s gamble of expending his own political capital on the bid failed.
“He didn’t do too much,” French IOC member Guy Drut said.
He said that the USOC’s financial disputes with the IOC were still unresolved. And he said White House security unnerved some IOC members.
“This morning the city was closed because of Barack Obama,” Drut said.
The last U.S. city to bid for the Summer Games, New York, did scarcely better. It was ousted in the second round in the 2005 vote that gave the 2012 Games to London.
By the way, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that if George W. Bush had been the one appealing for the games to be held in Dallas, and had that bid failed in the first round, right wingers would be calling on Americans to boycott the games. Now, because the president is a Democrat, and a Democrat named Barack Obama at that, the right is gleeful at this loss for America. That, in the end, is where our politics have descended to.
Meanwhile: from the Chicago Tribuine, Mayor Daley reacts (as does President Obama)
And columnist David Haugh says “honk if you hate the IOC process.” (HONK!)
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