264 days and counting. The lead up to the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing is in full swing, and even the often reserved Michael Enright is weighing in on the action. In a CBC Radio One broadcast last week, the renowned talk show host made his views on the upcoming games abundantly clear.
Ok, before I go any further, you should probably know a little background about me, and my radio listening habits. I’m a CBC kid, born and raised. In my parents’ kitchen in South River, the station is on literally 24 hrs a day. The drive home from Tuesday and Thursday night practice with the North Bay ski team was a full hour of As It Happens. I can recite the phone numbers and email addresses of almost every Radio One show that has existed since I was born. Get it yet?….I like the CBC. This affinity for talk show radio and ‘up to the minute’ news stories has fostered a strong journalistic impulse in me, and lead to my enrollment in a political science program at Athabasca University. Michael Enright, the host of The Sunday Edition is, in my opinion, at the forefront of radio journalism. You could say I have a fairly deep respect for the man. All this contributed to my shock and dismay at Enright’s recent comments about the Olympic movement.
"The International Olympic Committee is preoccupied with keeping the revenue from TV rights rolling in…China is not going to change unless the rest of the world acts…
There's something discomforting about the young men and women and the Games themselves, acting as shills for such a regime,"
Excuse me? Did I hear that correctly? Granted, Mr. Enright’s show is known for not shying away from controversial issues, but this is utterly unacceptable. As Scott Russel so eloquently put it in his rebuke of Enright’s comments, (available here:
http://www.cbc.ca/sports/indepth/russell/column_071107.html ) “To listen to that was offensive. It gave Michael Enright away. He obviously doesn't understand Olympians. Maybe it's because he's never bothered to learn anything about them.”
While I agree with Enright’s view that the worlds ignorance to China’s indirect funding of genocide in Darfur needs to end, and fast, the fact that he is painting Canadian Athletes as some sort of political poker chip is not only disgraceful, it makes my stomach turn. The simple breakdown of the situation is that China supplies the Sudanese Government, through their shady oil field dealings, with the cash needed to pay for the masses of militia that are terrorizing and killing as the government pleases. Obviously this is one of the greatest and gravest humanitarian crises in the world today, but that is not justification for the slander of Canada’s best and brightest. First of all, our current government is far too timid to risk applying even subtle diplomatic pressure on China, let alone advocating that our athletes openly criticize the country that is their host. Secondly, his claim that the dedicated sportsmen and women of our country are in some way being complicit in some sort of smoke screen (dare I say support) for the benefit of the Chinese government is nothing more than the incredibly ignorant and misguided opinion of someone who clearly doesn’t understand the greater meaning of sport at all. The Olympic movement is and must always be one of the purest forms of human interaction we have. It is meant to show that people of every race, creed or background are equal, and can compete on a level field outside the context of the world’s other conflicts. It is a movement of the youth of the world and showcases the power of the human spirit. The Games have survived incredibly serene through a litany of attempts to politicize them. World War One and Two, the tragic Munich terrorist attacks, The Cold War just to name a few, are all prime examples of governments attempting and failing to convert the Olympic Games into a political tool. All were utter (if eventual) failures, and all were just as ill advised as Mr Enright’s comments. Governments, both democratic and otherwise, just and otherwise, are things we all have to deal with, but to drag one of the last bastions of equality and fairness into the giant quagmire of international politics should be unthinkable. Politics is the game of politicians. Sport is the game for the rest of us. Leave it that way.
0 comments:
Post a Comment