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The Beijing Olympics at Hollywood Jesus
Click through to read the full articles...
 This month at Hollywood Jesus, our Music Editor (and sports enthusiast) Jacob Sahms has written a fine series of articles on the Olympics.
In Part One, Jacob takes a tour through classic moments from recent games, and also covers the modern history of the event. Here's a sample:
As a preteen and teenager, I lined my walls with
the pictures of my heroes. Comic book characters, movie stars, and
their fictional brethren were the stuff of legend in my childhood
fantasies. But another group of individuals-a few spectacular,
real-life characters-dominated a wall of their own.
These were the Olympians: from David Robinson and
Michael Jordan, Matt Biondi and Summer Sanders, to Carl Lewis and Flo
Jo. These men and women lived real lives that inspired me to be
something greater; in the pool or on the track, and even off of it,
they were legends, but they weren't imagined. I saw them compete and
struggle against the odds with my own eyes, glued to the television
every four years.
The Olympics remain more than just a sporting event to me as they
continue to grow in importance and potential. In a world facing hunger,
homelessness, global warming, and terrorism, the world's champions
appear as one on a central stage every four years. What other sporting
event challenges the best of the best to train, compete, and dream of
winning, with the whole world watching and the opportunity for hope and
peace?
Pierre Fredy, Baron de Coubertin, founded the
International Olympic Committee to promote physical fitness and peace.
Discouraged by the defeat of the French in the Franco-Prussian War,
Coubertin built on the foundation laid by Zappas and pushed the platform of "mens sana in corpore sano," or "a sound mind in a healthy body."
Coubertin wrote, "The first essential
characteristics of the Olympics, both ancient as well as modern, is to
be a religion. It represents, above and outside the Churches,
humanity's superior religion." Coubertin saw the struggle-the journey of each Games and their
champions-as a means to reach a higher calling, beyond winning or
losing.
In Part Two, Jacob examines the politics and spirit of the games:
Avery Brundage, arguing against those who expected more of the IOC when dealing
with Nazi Germany, re-stated "one of the basic principles of
the Olympic Games: that politics play no part whatsoever in them."
Really?
One can't be too surprised, though: Brundage is
the same leader of the IOC who opposed women in competition-considering
them worthless to any sport-and proposed that all team sports be
removed from the Summer Games, and that the Winter Games being
eradicated altogether.
Flash forward to the present. In 2008, the Beijing
Olympics are the platform for political outrage at the Chinese
Communist Party. Human rights abuses and the Chinese government's
handling of Tibet, Taiwan, and Darfur
have raised the ire of groups like Students for a Free Tibet, Amnesty
International, and Save Darfur, as well as individuals like Mia Farrow.
Unfortunately, some Olympic athletes feel that it is inappropriate to
speak up, like Lebron James and Gary Hall, Jr. Citing
Rule 51-"No kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial
propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other
areas"-some Olympians feel that their presence is solely for
competition's sake, and no discourse can happen in the arena of sport.
Steven Spielberg obviously disagreed when he
withdrew as an artistic advisor from the Beijing Games because of
negative Chinese involvement in Darfur. The IOC
responded in true Brundagian fashion, stating that they were a sporting
and not a political association and couldn't be expected to solve the
world's problems. Somehow, this strikes me as quite similar to Charles
Barkley's stand on being a role model: empty, hollow, jaded, and
self-serving.
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For two weeks, national pride will be on display as unknowns become
stars, records are broken, and history is made. 
