Beijing 2008, or: who else isn't watching?

[Adrian II]

So who else isn't watching this stupendous display of trivia and hysteria? You aan I are probably the only ones and we may not even agree on the reason why we don't watch.

I don't watch because the games are kitsch. They represent power politics, big money and chauvinism and have nothing to do with sports, certainly not amateur sports, although they profess to be about nothing but the latter.

Feng Jianzhong, deputy chief of the Chinese Sports Affairs Bureau, has stated that the last candidate to bear the Olympic torch would 'represent the image of China, can communicate with the world and can show the Olympic spirit.' Well, Mr Li Ning, of Li Ning Sportswear Ltd, certainly did. His company made a handsome profit on the Hong Kong stock exchange this week. And not only the fireworks were fake, so was the singing of the Chinese hymn. No doubt most sports victories are fake, too, although you never know which one until the drugs tests are in, the corrupt judges are smoked out (which they never are) and the real women are separated from the steroid hybrids.

Call me oldfashioned, but to me it's simply distasteful to see all those vain, empty-headed sports figures assembling in one of the world's worst dictatorships and doing their inane little routines with balls and spears and stuff, and all the world is watching it on tv and going 'aaah', oblivious of the millions of slaves in China's camp system, some of whom live not far from Beijing since they had to help build some of the facilities.

Bah. At least the Roman circuses were the real deal, they weren't effeminate celebrations of commercialism that destroyed the manly spirit of the observers; they inspired them to face wounds and death scornfully, to celebrate the glory and victory even of criminals and slaves as long as they demonstrated aptitude, courage and persistence.

But wait, the Chinese have Christians, don't they? Why don't they throw some of them to the pandas lions? They kill them in prisons, underground cellars and work camps, so why not in public?