Herhold: Olympic flame relays have always been political
In football terms, it was a bootleg, a grand misdirection. The Olympic torch hid more than it inspired Wednesday in San Francisco. It disappeared into a warehouse, feinted toward the Golden Gate Bridge and ended on a bus to the airport like a candidate for witness protection.
Count it a political victory for San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, a tactical triumph for the San Francisco police, a saving of face for the Chinese government.
A torch relay that resorted to duplicity, however, hardly glorified the Beijing Olympics. It also acknowledged just how serious the protests to China's policies are.
You've heard the argument, maybe even repeated it yourself: The Olympic Games are about sports. Why spoil its symbolism - the torch relay - with protest?
Let me break it to you as gently as I know how. If you believe that, you embrace hogwash. The Olympic Games and the torch relay have been about politics for decades. (bold added)
So there was nothing wrong when thousands of protesters showed up Wednesday to protest the Chinese government's policies in Darfur, Tibet and Myanmar.
In fact, there was a lot right. In the absence of the flame, the protesters - and the pro-Chinese demonstrators who arrived to counter them - came closer to dialogue than warfare.
Sure, it was hardly a completely polite day. The San Francisco police took away a number of folks who got out of hand. And the torch's route was changed to avoid confrontation.
But anyone who thinks that all messiness - all passion - can be avoided in discussing issues like Tibet or Darfur is unrealistic at best and repressive at worst. A little history lesson is in order: The modern torch relay got its start in 1936 as a propaganda stunt for the Nazis, who saw a torch run from Greece to Berlin as a way of building interest in the games and burnishing Hitler's regime. Leni Riefenstahl filmed it. Joseph Goebbels used it. And the Olympic movement, which was never as much about peace and harmony as people think, embraced it. Are the Olympics really just about sports? If that were true, the games would be in one place every four years. The contestants would march in by event rather than by nation. Nobody would tally medals by country. Commercial endorsements would matter less. In truth, governments, corporations and protesters know the Olympics are a stage to be seized. The East Germans cultivated athletes to promote Communism. Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in Mexico City to decry racism. Jimmy Carter kept American athletes out of the games in 1980 to protest the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. The Chinese understand the propaganda value of the games better than anyone. It's a chance to say their country has arrived. And the reason the Beijing leadership picked San Francisco as the lone American stop for the torch relay had much to do with the city's large Chinese-American population. What was so interesting Wednesday was that San Francisco authorities took away much of the stage. You could almost sense their delight at defusing the strife by sleight-of-hand. It was a game of "Where's Waldo," played against the landscape of a lovely city. Was the torch going down the Embarcadero? Well, no. Was it aboard a bus? Yes, possibly. Was it going to end up at Justin Herman Plaza? No again. The Chinese government, like the administration of George W. Bush, has much to answer for: They have repressed the Tibetans and refused to negotiate with the Dalai Lama. They've enabled the Sudan's genocidal killing in Darfur. On Wednesday, you could see a vigorous counter-thrust from pro-Beijing forces. The Olympics should rightly be a matter of pride for the Chinese. Their country has made enormous strides in the last 30 years. But in the stagecraft of San Francisco authorities, you could read a subtle message: Sure, we'll give your guys in the blue sweatsuits a workout protecting the torch. We'll let you save face. But we're staying away from the tinder of protest on the Embarcadero. And maybe you ought to understand just why it's there.
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