{"id":6334,"date":"2012-07-27T13:29:02","date_gmt":"2012-07-27T17:29:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=6334"},"modified":"2012-11-30T08:46:36","modified_gmt":"2012-11-30T13:46:36","slug":"the-persistent-politics-of-the-olympic-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2012\/07\/27\/the-persistent-politics-of-the-olympic-games\/","title":{"rendered":"The persistent politics of the Olympic Games"},"content":{"rendered":"

Living in the glow of Lake Placid’s Olympic history, it’s been interesting the last few months watching Mitt Romney nudge the Olympics into the political spotlight.<\/p>\n

His roll in salvaging the Winter Games in Salt Lake City in 2002 has emerged as one of his major hall-marks, a sign that he can turn around big, complicated enterprises.<\/p>\n

Of course, Romney waded into the muddle of Olympic-scale politics this week when he said that he was “disconcerted” by some of the preparations for the London Summer Olympics this year.\u00a0\u00a0 The comment triggered a firestorm in Britain.<\/p>\n

We know, of course, that the Olympics have always had a political dimension.\u00a0 The Miracle On Ice in our backyard was a sporting event, but it was also a pivot point in the Cold War, one of those freeze frames in geopolitical history.<\/p>\n

I found a great chronology put together by The Guardian newspaper<\/a> that captures some of the other political flare-ups, often ones that burned brighter than the Olympic flame itself.<\/p>\n

In 1936, African American athlete Jesse Owens thwarted Adolph Hitler’s effort to use the Berlin games as Nazi propaganda, winning four gold medals.<\/p>\n

Over the decades that followed, countries boycotted the games again and again (China, the Soviet Union, the US) or were tossed out (South Africa).<\/p>\n

In 1964, the final torchbearer chosen for the Tokyo winter games was Yoshinori Sakai, who was born on the day Hiroshima was destroyed by an atomic bomb.<\/span><\/p>\n

The 1972 Munich Games, of course, were marred by violence as Palestinian terrorists attacked the Israeli delegation, killing nine.<\/p>\n

This year, the politics are — so far at least — less stark and dramatic, but still significant.\u00a0 Romney’s gaffe is only one manifestation.<\/p>\n

Four years after China’s breathtaking games, this is an opportunity for Europe to show that it still has vibrancy and vitality, in the wake of a recession and a financial meltdown that continue to threaten the world economy.<\/p>\n

That may be one reason the Brits took Romney’s comments to heart.\u00a0 They know they have a lot to prove and don’t want anyone sniping from the sidelines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Living in the glow of Lake Placid’s Olympic history, it’s been interesting the last few […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[6550,887],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6334"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6334\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}