The Olympics As Political Football
Matt Yglesias writes about where you can hold the Olympics without feeling like a moral hypocrite:
With Russia beating up on Georgia at the very same time as the Olympics are underway in Beijing, it’s perhaps inevitable that the conversation has now turned to the propriety of Russia hosting the 2014 winter games while under the rule of a “bad actor” regime. This, combined with the boomlet earlier this year for the idea of boycotting the Beijing games, makes me wonder if it wouldn’t be better to adopt a policy of trying to award the Olympics only to unimportant countries.
Well, that sounds nice and all, but of course it will not work, because at bottom, the Olympics are a big commercial enterprise. Whoever ponies up the money, gets the games. And yes, lots of times out and out bribery of IOC officials is involved. I was struck by this part of Matt's piece though:
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