I'm boycotting watching the olympics, after reading a
slashdot posting on the topic. This is a summary of the low points.
The bits that get to me most: enforced renaming of many businesses,
and censoring of Taiwanese political speech at Atlanta.
So what's my problem with the Olympics? Well, there's a pattern.
Note, blockquotes are from slashdot thread above.
by bstone (145356)
What really frosts me about these sponsorship wars is when the
sponsors are allowed to pay to keep me from using competing
products. I can see VISA paying to be the Olympic sponsor, and getting
the resulting publicity, but when they can pay places to NOT take my
credit card, it crosses a line. . . . The fact that they're proud of
making these deals ("be sure to bring your VISA card because you can't
use American Express"), knowing that they have paid to force me to
carry extra credit cards with me, especially in these times of
identity theft and credit card fraud where I'd much rather just carry
one card and watch it closely, seems to me like it should be illegal.
Drug Testing
This is an arguable point. Certainly, it catches athletes by the
ton. But an alternative, freer point of view might be to let arms
races happen in pharmaceuticals. That's my instinct. After all, they
allow athletes to have artificial enhancements and even substances all over
the place (contact lenses, muscles from planned training programs,
aspirin, shampoo, Gatorade, etc etc). Why do we draw the line at
steroids? You can reasonably argue that the IOC is only preserving a
line that our society has chosen to draw more generally. But it seems
to me that the IOC is on the side of the reflexively repressive here.
E.g., they show no qualms in missing out in a chance to get in on the
side of freedom.
Security Theater?
I'm not even getting into this, though I imagine overzealous security
may be a serious reason for low ticket demand. The fact that the
Olympics has excellent reason to be nervous rather makes it a harder
thing to get at, though.
Friends of mine who work at Olympic-related services are not allowed
to bring to work a bag of food that has the name of a rival company of
McDonalds. They are instructed by security officers to use simple
white bags without these logos!
Limitations on political speech, in the United States.
by Kaiwen (123401)
The IOC doesn't restrict its censorship to corporate interests -- it also meddles
in the political sphere. Amidst all the flag-waving you see going on -- US flags,
Russian flags, Greek flags, Chinese flags, flags from every country with
representatives in the games -- there is one flag you WON'T see -- Taiwan's.
Why? Because it makes Beijing unhappy. At the Atlanta games -- smack in
the middle of the "Land of the Free" -- three friends of mine were removed for
displaying a Taiwanese flag at an event in which Taiwanese athletes were
competing. This year, while watching, for example, the archery competition
(the only event in which Taiwan medaled), Taiwanese spectators were
waving IOC-issued flags to replace the Taiwanese flags they had brought.
The IOC is not merely a corporate puppet -- it's a political lackey as
well. Lee Kaiwen, Taiwan
IOC Trademark Law Interpretation
by linuxtelephony (141049)
I lived in Atlanta in 1992, 4 years before the 1996 Olympics
there. The IOC was going around nailing anybody with ANYTHING remotely
like "Olympic" in their company name or product. One example, Olympian
Pools, or something like that. ...
I stopped watching, paying attention, or even caring about the
Olympics after I saw what they did in Atlanta. Judging by the dismal
ticket sales, perhaps this is a growing trend.
Some Opinion (yeah, also from the slashdot thread)
by snarkasaurus (627205)
As far as the IOC is concerned the athletes have no rights. They exist
for the sole purpose of enriching the IOC and its contituent gratuity
seeking, slime mold apparatchiks. These people don't walk, they glide
on an extruded layer of mucous.
by PatHMV (701344)
Maybe all the stadiums are empty because all the spectators were
turned away for wearing Polo(TM) shirts?
I mean, really. As a more-or-less private entity, the IOC cand do
whatever it wants in terms of allowing people into venues, etc. But
they have turned the whole spectacle into little more than a giant
advertising venue, and that has made me lose interest in the whole
deal. I saw it really start to go wrong back with the flap over
whether some of the original US Dream Team could wear Reebok clothes
(who sponsored those athletes) or would be forced to wear Nike
jumpsuits (who sponsored the Olympics). The more the IOC does this,
the fewer people will be willing to turn out and attend.
Mind you, I'm not in the commercial-sponsorships-are-evil camp. I
just believe that both the IOC and their sponsoring companies
should behave ethically, and see that, especially on the IOC side,
there is a whole pattern of bad behavior. I also think that sponsors
should be ashamed of signing deals that involve them in crackdowns on
freedom of expression. Especially US corporations, and even more
especially for the US Olympics, where this behavior is legal, but well
beyond cultural norms.
I firmly believe that I could run a commercially successful Olympics
without this microfascism. I'd auction off 10-50 global media
licenses, plus one auction from each country (no exclusivity - just a
special thing to allow 3rd-World media in). I think that'd make
plenty of money right there, enough that I wouldn't need extortionate
sponsorships. No limitations on blogging. IMHO, that'd raise my
value by raising audience interest still farther. There'd be
sponsorships, and we'd use the sponsored product, where practical, but
no forcing it down peoples' throats. If we get guerilla advertising,
that's life in freedom. I'd point out to the sponsors that they're
getting extra exposure from the resulting controversy.
Posted by Jon Kay at August 25, 2004 02:33 AM
Comments
The New York Times op-ed page doesn't usually provide comic relief, but this is pretty good.
Posted by: Todd Pearson at August 25, 2004 12:14 PM
I like the NYT pointer... it does say it all.
The Faustian bargain argument does have serious weight with me, especially since the Olympics serve as role models. On the other hand, arguably Olympic athletics is all about Faustian bargains. You basically spend your life on the offchance that you might get a bronze medal and get asked by a reporter just how bad you feel..... All right, that's a terrible argument.
A real one is, athletes already take serious risks of injury in their training routines, even without high-tech concoctions. Is that really a worse risk?
The argument about competitiveness of poor nations actually seems likely to run the other way. Technology has long been the ally of the poor. It's the wealthy nations that have personally tailored training regimes, chosen with the aid of computer programs and specialized trainers. And a high general level of personal training help for the athletes. These tend to be more expensive than pills.... Can you imagine the Afghan team having that kind of stuff anytime soon? The argument could just as easily be made that us rich countries don't want the poor countries to have a chance....
