Should we remove politics from the Olympics?

[RB TexLa]

Poll question: Should we remove politics from the Olympics?

[KurtNYC]

1. We should end the Olympics in their current form

Some unlucky set of taxpayers gets to fund the building of multi-million dollar velodromes and other elaborate sports stadiums every 4 years. They get used for 13 days but the bills go on for years afterward. Hosting the Olympics bankrupted Montreal and has left lasting financial and social damage in most of the recent host cities.

IMHO The Olympics should be hosted in Greece every 4 years. The IOC should be disbanded immediately.

[Romulox]

2. Any time two people interact, there is politics involved. Deal with it. nt

[datasuspect]

3. we should remove clothing from the olympics

if it was good enough for the greeks . . .

[bluestateguy]

4. I think the boycott of the Soviet Olympics was an outrage

And it was just as wrong for them to boycott our games in 1984 too.

[sam sarrha]

5. well yes.... as long as you keep em out of a country with an ongoing State Sponsored Brutal Genocide

and China is involved in TWO at the moment.. F'n wake up

[TooBigaTent]

6. The Olympics have strayed so far from the war-break they were designed to be.

They are now forums for corporate greed and nationalistic extremism.

IMO, they should be restricted to individuals who meet international athletic criteria, removing any link to individual nations. Ditch the flags and anthyms and medal counts.

Omitting clothes would be good, too.

[KharmaTrain]

7. Accept It For What It Is...Commercial Guttony

Politics and nationalism are at the heart of the modern Olympics...sports is just the window-dressing. It's about medal counts that somehow equate your nation's excellence or superiority over another...or in the case of a small country, the chance for them to stand on the world stage with the big boys for once.

But the real politics of the Olympics is the money behind it. Billions are spent in the promoting and coverage of this event...again, the sports is the window-dressing, nationalism is what sells. A corporation can wrap itself in a flag and make a lot of money...a network can dominate television ratings for a month and make a boatload of money and sponsors will use the Olympic logo and other associations to sell everything from panty hose to panty hose. The sports is just the veneer of the international commercial spectacle...a massive orgy of nationalism.

To a certain degree the Olympic movement has admitted its greed by allowing professionals and the open display of logos, and removing either will doom the games as the profit motive shrinks.

[Igel]

8. Sure.

First, they always occur in the same country, preferably on that country's borders. For the duration of the games, that portion of the country is ceded to UN or Olympic control.

Greece sounds fine to me. Or Macedonia. Or Andorra, for that matter.

It would be really handy if there were adjacent areas that could house both winter and summer games. This brings Los Angeles County or someplace like it to mind--winter games up in the mountains, summer games in Riverside.

The Olympic torch is lit the morning that the games are open, and its one circuit is through the compounds or areas reserved to the athletes.

National flags must be 1/2 the size of the Olympic flag in each country's contingent during any parade.

Any territory with a functioning government is allowed to come, with no reflection on their status as independent territories: Taiwan, Gaza/West Bank. If two territories have unstable borders with respect to each other, even if they're considered one "country", they can have two teams (think Romania and that little sliver of Romania that is de facto independent). The one requirement is that the people representing a team must *live* and, preferably, train there for a large portion of the year, so no Tibetan team made up of emigres.

Now *that* should certainly irritate the chauvinists on all sides.

[bryant69]

9. Are we capable of removing politics from the Olympics?

The answer is probably not.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[The Inquisitive]

10. I don't really see how you possibly could

I mean for most people the individual athletes mean absolutely nothing, just the flag next to their names. It's about the medal count and flexing a bit of national muscle (pun intended).

[Squatch]

11. As long as the atheltes wear the uniforms of their countries...

politics will always be the underpinnings of the olympics.

[Iggo]

12. The Olympics are already banned at my house.

I invite others to join the general boycott.