Caitlin Yarsky

A couple weeks ago, there was a big ruckus in the media about the protesters trying to put out the Olympic Torch while it was on its multi-continental tour to Beijing. Protesters in Paris actually put the torch out.

They were protesting for a variety of reasons. Some turned out against China’s environmental record. Others thought it cruel to evict between 6,037 (the official government figure) and 1.5 million (according to the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, a European advocacy group). Some, like the group that hung a “Free Tibet” banner from the Golden Gate Bridge, were against China’s 57-year occupation in Tibet. Finally, there were the counter-protesters. According to media reports, they were mainly Chinese by ethnicity (if not birth) and felt China deserved to host the Olympic Games, and that the other protesters were trying to (in the words of China’s state run media) “inject politics into the Olympics.”

Opposition to “injecting politics” into the games is an international talking point. British athletes need to sign pledges promising not to make political comments. The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists, has said that China deserves to host the game. And our own President Bush said that he views the Olympics as purely “a sporting event.”

There’s something for everyone to dislike about China hosting the Olympics. I’m going to go with the human rights violations. I happen to be a big fan of human rights. I love exercising my right to freely speak and print unpopular opinions. So I am going to personally boycott the Olympics. I will not watch the opening or closing ceremonies on TV. I will not care about any of the events. I will not go out of my way to find out anything about who won which competitions. And I absolutely will not buy any Olympic merchandise.

There’s a slight flaw in my protest, though. I wasn’t going to watch the Olympics anyway. The only sports I watch are football, baseball, and hockey, and I probably watch more sports than most people at RIT. There are only two others (basketball and soccer) that have any kind of following at all in the United States. However, none of those sports crown their real champions at the Olympics. Soccer’s championship is the World Cup, and the other four have players from all over the world come to compete professionally in North American leagues.

So if the Olympics don’t matter in American sports, why do we bother sending teams? The answer is politics. We want to show the world that we are the best country on earth. Our economy is strong enough that our government can spend more on our Olympic team than some countries spend on anything else. And it shows. Since the inception of the modern Games, America has won over 1,000 more medals than its closest competitor (the Soviet Union) and over 1,500 more than any other country that exists today. (The next closest is Italy.) Do we really have anything left to prove, Olympically?

China is doing the same thing. The whole reason they’re hosting the Olympics is to show the world that they’re a modern, industrialized country. They have the Olympics as a public relations move to show the rest of the world how great they are. That itself is a political move. We can’t separate politics from the Olympics any more than we can separate Roger Clemens from steroids, and it’s wrong to try. I therefore call on all Americans to join me in an Olympic boycott. Especially while the Rockies game is on.