The China Syndrome

Well, it appears, from what little I can gather from the occasional snatches of news I accidently hear or see, that the Peking, er, "Bay-Jing", Olympics have turned out to be a success, without any of the anticipated total meltdowns (toilets, air pollution, Tibet, Turkestan, dog meat, etc.) that had everyone biting their nails for months. The Chinese judges have, of course, come up with their own version of the erstwhile Soviet stone-faced female (?) judges who always said "da" to the Russian athletes and "nyet" to everyone else, especially the Amerikanskis. But that's just the price the Olympics have to pay for even having judged events at all, and I still say that anything that can't be settled with a stopwatch or a scale or a yardstick isn't a legitimate Olympic event. But hey, in these days of "beach volleyball" who's going to listen to such nonsense? Of course, there will always be the "controversy du jour" and this time around it seems to involve Chinese "women" athletes who have to have their diapers changed between events. Yeah well, in response to that I have to ask if the American training programs are any less abusive, since they turn pre-teens into hyper-muscular androids and do heaven knows what kind of damage to their endocrine systems -- all for a few "steenkin" medals. Ah, but as they say, "tout pour l'art". And I also observe that, as tacky as the Olympics can get at times, they are miles ahead of college and professional sports -- and probably of high school -- oh hell, grade school -- sports as well. For one thing, the coaches seem to be a pretty benign bunch, and I have yet to see an Olympic parent take after another Olympic parent with a baseball bat. Plus, do Olympic athletes get free muscle cars and straight Bs for courses they never even attended? I think not. And when they retire, do they automatically go into auto dealership? Doesn't seem likely. So, as flaky as all of the peripheral issues are, and as politicized as they can be, I still nominate the Olympics as the cleanest -- OK, least dirty -- of all the major athletic entities. Now, as to those gayified opening and closing ceremonies... oh, never mind !