[luojia312]

< Time>, April 7, 2008, Issued on March 27, 2008

Patriot Games.

Thursday, Mar. 27, 2008 By DAVID VON DREHLE

The idea of Olympic boycott as political protest goes back at least to 1956. Several European countries refused to go to Melbourne because the Soviet Union had crushed the Hungarian uprising, while some Middle East nations stayed away because of a fight over control of the Suez Canal.

All these years later, it's not clear how keeping athletes out of a track meet in Australia was supposed to affect postcolonial politics in Egypt. But by the 1970s and 1980s, boycotts were as much a part of the Olympics as spandex is today. The U.S. boycotted the Moscow Olympics. The Soviets boycotted the Olympics in Los Angeles. African nations boycotted the Montreal Games because New Zealand refused to boycott South African rugby. And rugby's not even an Olympic sport.

Boycott fever lifted with the end of the cold war. The Olympics turned to simpler concerns like doping and bribery. But with China's recent crackdown on dissenters and Tibetan nationalists, the first murmurs were heard of a possible boycott of this summer's Beijing Games.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he could not "close the door" to the possibility that he might skip part of the Beijing Olympics. Hollywood figures Steven Spielberg, Richard Gere and Mia Farrow have invoked the idea of a boycott for reasons ranging from Tibet to Darfur. Meanwhile, protesters are disrupting the winding path of the Olympic torch from Greece to the opening ceremonies.

Perhaps the temptation to declaim on such a grand stage is too much to resist. And because the Olympics have become a sort of debutante ball for nations entering the global élite, governments must ask whether mere attendance confers a stamp of approval on the host. The boycott logic is easy enough to follow.

But boycotts are empty gestures. Governments boycott, athletes suffer, and the only thing that changes is that the credibility of the Olympics as a festival of goodwill suffers another dent. Jesse Owens had the right idea. In 1936 he led the U.S. team at Hitler's Berlin Olympics--a black man in the land of Aryan supremacy. His four gold medals proved that quiet excellence can be a most eloquent statement.

[ccc]

引用:
作者: luojia312
< Time>, April 7, 2008, Issued on March 27, 2008

Patriot Games.

Thursday, Mar. 27, 2008 By DAVID VON DREHLE

...
...Hollywood figures ..., Richard Gere and ... have invoked the idea of a boycott ....

...

This does not surprise me at all because Richard Gere is "Dalai Lama's most high-profile disciple."

See this: An interview with Richard Gere on his relationship with His Holiness, the Dalai Lama

[northernwolf]

到目前为止，政治人物，运动员，都不同意地址北京奥运会。只有个别机会主义者，头脑简单的演员想趁机出一下名，或延长一下全球的眼球。这些人成事不足，败事有余。

[lungao]

作者: ccc

引用:
作者: luojia312
< Time>, April 7, 2008, Issued on March 27, 2008

This does not surprise me at all because Richard Gere is "Dalai Lama's most high-profile disciple."

达赖喇嘛不是公开宣称祝愿北京奥运圆满成功吗？看来这位弟子没有学好，走火入魔了。