So of the five Olympics between 2008 and 2016, three will be in the famous BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries. CNBC-types hype BRIC as the future, but they do so in a sort of condescending, “but-the-US-will-still-dominate”-way.
Two of those three BRIC Olympics are marquee summer Olympics in nations about which the intelligentsia, a few years ago, would have estimated were 100 years from an Olympics. The third is in a BRIC nation that has had an Olympics, but the games in question will be nowhere near the nerve center of that nation.
I think the times they may be a-changin’ faster than most folks think.
(Full disclosure, per the Joe Mama/Brendan debate earlier: I am strongly rooting against the times they a-changin’ in this regard. But I worry about it!)
And another of those Olympics will be held in Vancouver. BLAME CANADA!!!!!!
David K.
Considering the amount of money put into the olympics by American countries and the American media, it will be interesting to see if there is any fallout from this decision over the next decade or so.
I wonder if this feeds into this growing idea that Obama is ineffective. Kind of the “Carter II” meme being pushed by the right during the campaign. Could that have been right?
Sandy Underpants
I just read the Drudge headline saying, “The world rejects Obama”. I mean is this really something to celebrate over the Olympics choosing Brazil over America? The Olympic games have been hosted by the US twice out of 7 times, that’s more than any other country. I’d say go to Brazil. Chicago is a totally stupid place to host the games anyway. I do admire Obama’s passion to do everything he can to lobby the IOC to choose his city, but seriously, it’s a couple hours of work big deal. He should be working on getting the troops out of Afghanistan, but he can [not] do that while he’s on the plane.
Alec Taylor
Winning an Olympic bid is an exceptionally difficult thing to do, and as such I very much doubt that Chicago losing out to Rio implies anything remotely interesting about Obama’s personal effectiveness (as Brandon seems to be suggesting). That argument is predicated on the assumption that, if the US President bothers to turns up to lobby the IOC, then the US candidate city really *ought* to win. I think that’s absurd – not least because all candidate cities wil typically field their political leaders in an attempt to demonstrate their country’s commitment to staging the Games.
Some seem to be arguing that Obama made a political miscalculation in turning up to support Chicago’s bid. If Obama had not gone, I do wonder if these same people would be crictizing Obama for not bothering to turn up (“too timid, failure of leadership, why didn’t he stand up for America’s bid, blah, blah, blah”).
Watching the ESPN coverage of this now. It seems to me that ESPN did a better job than CNN of not losing their cool. When ESPN is beating CNN for anchors keeping their heads, something is weird.
Yellamo
Chicago is a totally stupid place to host the games anyway
And you have valid reasons to back this statement up?
So of the five Olympics between 2008 and 2016, three will be in the famous BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries. CNBC-types hype BRIC as the future, but they do so in a sort of condescending, “but-the-US-will-still-dominate”-way.
Two of those three BRIC Olympics are marquee summer Olympics in nations about which the intelligentsia, a few years ago, would have estimated were 100 years from an Olympics. The third is in a BRIC nation that has had an Olympics, but the games in question will be nowhere near the nerve center of that nation.
I think the times they may be a-changin’ faster than most folks think.
(Full disclosure, per the Joe Mama/Brendan debate earlier: I am strongly rooting against the times they a-changin’ in this regard. But I worry about it!)
And another of those Olympics will be held in Vancouver. BLAME CANADA!!!!!!
Considering the amount of money put into the olympics by American countries and the American media, it will be interesting to see if there is any fallout from this decision over the next decade or so.
companies, not countries. heh.
I wonder if this feeds into this growing idea that Obama is ineffective. Kind of the “Carter II” meme being pushed by the right during the campaign. Could that have been right?
I just read the Drudge headline saying, “The world rejects Obama”. I mean is this really something to celebrate over the Olympics choosing Brazil over America? The Olympic games have been hosted by the US twice out of 7 times, that’s more than any other country. I’d say go to Brazil. Chicago is a totally stupid place to host the games anyway. I do admire Obama’s passion to do everything he can to lobby the IOC to choose his city, but seriously, it’s a couple hours of work big deal. He should be working on getting the troops out of Afghanistan, but he can [not] do that while he’s on the plane.
Winning an Olympic bid is an exceptionally difficult thing to do, and as such I very much doubt that Chicago losing out to Rio implies anything remotely interesting about Obama’s personal effectiveness (as Brandon seems to be suggesting). That argument is predicated on the assumption that, if the US President bothers to turns up to lobby the IOC, then the US candidate city really *ought* to win. I think that’s absurd – not least because all candidate cities wil typically field their political leaders in an attempt to demonstrate their country’s commitment to staging the Games.
Some seem to be arguing that Obama made a political miscalculation in turning up to support Chicago’s bid. If Obama had not gone, I do wonder if these same people would be crictizing Obama for not bothering to turn up (“too timid, failure of leadership, why didn’t he stand up for America’s bid, blah, blah, blah”).
Sorry for the rant… it’s been a long week!
Watching the ESPN coverage of this now. It seems to me that ESPN did a better job than CNN of not losing their cool. When ESPN is beating CNN for anchors keeping their heads, something is weird.
Chicago is a totally stupid place to host the games anyway
And you have valid reasons to back this statement up?