Olympics and politics can fit sometimes
(In response to Tuesday's column by Garrett Cleverly titled "Keep politics out of Olympics")
I have read several of Cleverly's columns, and each time I have come away wondering if he has the ability to think logically. This time is no exception. He says that politics should be kept out of the Olympics. I agree with him there. I would, however, like to point out that it is the Chinese government who is really using it for political gain. In 1949, when the Communists took power, China was what could be described as a backward peasant society. Today, it is an economic powerhouse with the fastest growing economy in the world.
The Chinese government wants to show what Beijing and the rest of China have become. Could you be any more political than that? Also, I wonder what he would say if this were the 1936 Berlin games and he had knowledge of how Hitler was treating the Jews.
Cleverly poses the question "Imagine if the Olympics were in the Netherlands. Would the entire world boycott the Olympics because China is going to compete in it?" Here's the answer: no. Why? Because the last time I checked, the Dutch government is not brutally suppressing a people who simply want to be free of a regime that has oppressed them for decades.
I also want to know how Cleverly can guarantee that Hillary Clinton has never watched the Olympics. He also says, in that same sentence, that the media is making a big deal over it. It is a big deal. Thousands of innocent people have been murdered by this brutal regime that has terrorized the Tibetan people for nearly 60 years.
Also, when have any members of the U.S. Olympic teams said that they will not participate? I have not heard any of them say that. With that in mind, I do not see how it is conceivable that the U.S. will not participate, as he says in paragraph five. Seriously, Mr. Cleverly, where do you get any of the ideas that you write down?
Ari Spangenthal-Lee
Undergraduate
Garrett Cleverly is way off base. Yes, it sucks for those athletes that will lose those four years of their prime. I remember reading how poor Edwin Moses, the greatest hurdler of all time, missing out on some almost guaranteed gold medals with an earlier such boycott. But good or bad, the Olympics have always been far bigger than the athletes themselves. Just look at Hitler's Germany when Jesse Owens single-handedly crushed their "superior race." China has horrible governmental policies to not only the Tibetans, but also to their own people.
Allowing them to host the Olympics was a grave injustice that serves to tell them while we complain about your policies; we won't do anything about them. Participation in them will do nothing but the same. Countries boycotting Beijing will not only serve as an insult to the host but hopefully serve as a wake-up call that it is not okay with the leaders of the world for the Chinese government to continually treat humans like dirt while smiling to the cameras and pretending nothing is wrong.
Josie McGwire
ASU Alum
