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To change the Olympics, change the channel
Jonathan Zimmerman
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
I love everything about sports: playing them, viewing them and writing about them. But when the Olympic Games start later this week in Beijing, I'm not going to watch. And neither should you.
Call it the People's Boycott. Despite worldwide protests, every major nation is sending its athletes to Beijing. That's all the more reason for you and me to stage our own silent demonstration. If you want to change the Olympics, change the channel.
Anything less will make you party to the cynical brutality of China's leaders, who have broken nearly every promise they made when they were awarded the Games in 2001. Although the government pledged to allow journalists unfettered access to the Internet during the Olympics, for example, censors have blocked Web sites such as Radio Free Asia and Amnesty International. This is the same regime that bankrolls Sudanese dictator Omar el-Bashir, who was recently indicted for genocide and war crimes in Darfur. But China turns a deaf ear to the international community, insisting that the Darfur crisis is an "internal affair."
And that's the same line it uses with respect to Tibet, of course, where China crushed a rebellion earlier this spring. Ditto for the jailing of political dissidents and the muzzling of parents who lost children during last May's earthquake. "Internal affairs," all.
If you really believe that, go ahead and watch the Olympics. But if you think that people should have the same human rights, no matter where they happen to live, then it's incumbent upon you to look away when the Games come on. The People's Boycott will face objections, of course. I can already predict five of them:
1. The Olympics shouldn't be "political." That's like saying unmarried men shouldn't be bachelors. The Olympics have always been political. They were political in 1936, when Adolf Hitler used the Games to burnish his international standing; in 1968, when two African American medal-winners raised their fists in a black power salute; in 1972, when Palestinian terrorists murdered 11 Israeli athletes; and in 1980, when 60 nations boycotted the Moscow Olympics to protest the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. One of those nations was - you guessed it - the People's Republic of China.
2. Protesting the Olympics reflects "anti-Chinese" bigotry. No, it doesn't. It's a critique of the Chinese government, not of its citizenry. I have written hundreds of columns questioning the American government's behavior, in Iraq and elsewhere, and but that doesn't mean I'm "anti-American." So why does a demand for an Olympic boycott make me "anti-Chinese"?
3. The United States commits its own human-rights abuses, in Iraq and elsewhere. Like I said, I'm no friend of the war in Iraq. But I'm also free to tell you that, in print and in person, without fear of government goons harassing me or my family. Chinese dissidents aren't so lucky.
4. The People's Boycott will penalize hard-working athletes. That was the best argument I have heard against a true Olympic boycott: if a country withheld its athletes, their toil and preparation would go for naught. Now that all of the nations are participating, however, it's hard to see how turning off your television set will harm Olympic competitors. They'll still get to play, but they'll also get put on notice that lots of people object.
5. The People's Boycott won't make a difference. Maybe not this year. But down the road, it will. After all, NBC bid nearly $900 million to broadcast the Beijing Games. If its TV ratings suffer, you can bet that the International Olympic Committee - which derives the bulk of its revenue from broadcast fees - will think twice before awarding the Games to another dictatorial government.
And remember: Whether you watch the Olympics or not, your children will be watching you. One day, people will read about the Beijing Games and ask how the world could possibly have played along. Your kids will have a ready answer: We didn't. And they'll be proud of it, too.
Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of history and education at New York University, is the author of "Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory," forthcoming from Yale University Press.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/05/EDH0124R8M.DTL
This article appeared on page B - 7 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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