You just have to love the irony of the Chinese inviting the world to come visit their country, but please don't talk about it.
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STARR GAZING
Mark Starr
Let the Games Be Games
I believe in free speech. Which doesn't mean I want to see athletes making political statements from the medal podiums in Beijing.
Feb 28, 2008 | Updated: 12:55 p.m. ET Feb 27, 2008
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We journalists tend by nature to be observers rather than activists. But back in 1968, when I was still a college student, I wrote the only protest letter of my life.
After sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos had made international headlines with their black power salutes from the Olympic podium in Mexico City, Avery Brundage, the right-wing American who was at the time the head of the International Olympic Committee, ordered their expulsion from the Olympic village and suspension from the U.S. team. I wrote Brundage decrying his decision, insisting that the two men had represented our country with great dignity on and off the track and that their protest embodied America's finest free-speech traditions.
Now, 40 years later, I remain a fervent believer in free speech. But I confess, as the issue threatens to once again provoke an Olympic controversy—this time at the 2008 Games this August in Beijing—my view is a little more nuanced. There is currently outrage brewing that some of the international federations—the British appear to be in the forefront, and there is suspicion that the U.S. Olympic Committee is of a like mind—are trying to put the clamps on any athletic protests that might offend the sensibilities of the Olympic host nation.
The folks who are most outraged tend to have a very specific vision of these curbs on free speech. They are hoping that these Olympics, rather than being a coming-out party for China, will shine an unfavorable light on the country's human rights and international trade practices. Most particularly they want to create pressure on China because of its economic ties with Sudan, a relationship that, opponents say, helps prop up a murderous regime there and allows it to persist in policies that are known as the Darfur genocide.
Quite frankly, if every medalist from every country would raise a fist, shout a word or make some gesture against the horror in Darfur, I would probably be thrilled. But that fantasy stems from a limited perspective on what free speech in a complex and polarized world might mean. Absolute free speech could mean that, along with a Darfur protest, Iranian weightlifters insult their Zionist neighbor and Serbian basketball players denounce the breakaway state of Kosovo. And while Chinese complicity with Darfur may appall Americans, much of the world regards the United States as the most egregious offender in the world on many fronts. If our well-intentioned athletes start bashing China, you might begin to hear equally harsh views on a number of American policies like Guantánamo Bay or the Kyoto Protocol or support for Israel.
Of course, that prospect may not alarm everyone in the United States. Some may even welcome a bit of a public shaming. But it would serve no useful purpose and would be more likely to produce a backlash than any constructive change. Besides, so much of life is already a cacophony of conflicting worldviews, with fingers pointing back and forth in every which direction. The Olympics is not meant to be the United Nations, but rather the united nations. Its beauty, at least as an ideal if not always in practice, is that for 17 days countries can transcend, or at least set aside, their differences in a common endeavor. Obviously, we can point to a host of failures in Olympics past. But there have also been precious moments when nations found common ground within the Olympic cocoon.
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