My apologies if this has already been noted, I haven’t read the whole thread: I just wanted to thank the OP and his/her supporters, for providing a textbook example of party-before-country. It’s absolutely perfect.
Touche’, and well played! My language was inflamatory, but this is after all, the Pit. I try to mind my manners elsewhere here.
My serious opinion would have said that it is the public face that Chicago displays to the world that was the problem with getting the Olympics. That public face is often not a good face. Of course, bad news sells and good news is not reported. I have no doubt of the love people who live there have for the city, it just isn’t for me. And image is important. Justified or not, Madrid!, Rio!, Chicago?
It was not in anyway a reflection upon Obama, nor was it a waste of time to go. And many pages could be written about how the IOC awards the sites.
Shit, the keys on this cedar keyboard keep sticking. Gotta go whittle some more.
Oh, I totally agree that the Olympics aren’t relevant. I just see it as a symptom of a broader problem. Perhaps it wasn’t the intent of the OP (so I shouldn’t have singled him out, I was really responding to Stephe’s attitude), but I definitely see that intent in Stephe’s bizarre, manic posts, so I don’t think it’s unreasonable to bring it up.
And I think it’s a sad commentary on our nation’s priorities that anyone would perceive him as diminished for attempting to get some positive PR for America at a time when we could use it. I can’t remark on how important it is, because I don’t know much about Chicago’s situation or how much its economy might actually benefit from an Olympics, or whether Chicagoans really wanted it. But regardless of how important it is, I don’t think it should be portrayed the way it has been portrayed in this thread.
Fair enough.
I regret flinging a personal insult at the OP (in case you missed it, ‘‘fucking moron’’ was directed at the OP)… it’s not generally my style. I’ve just had it up to here with this petty bullshit. It does nothing to help anything. It might feel good to you to mock something as irrelevant as Obama’s involvement in the Olympics, but all you succeed in doing is alienating others, and the divide grows ever bigger, and our hopes of ever achieving a unified country drift that much further away. It bothers the hell out of me, and I don’t know what to do about it, so I rant about it for a little while. That didn’t really help either, so I guess we’re all just fucked.
Ha! You accuse me of something and display the very behavior you accuse me of in the very post. Man, you’re dumb.
YAnd wrong. In fact, go do a search and see if anything I ever typed since 2004 indicates that I voted for Bush. In fact, you’ll find numerous instances of me explicitly pointing out that I did not, that I was even disgusted by his annointing as the Rep. candidate back in 2000. I think you mistake a lack of Bush Derangement Syndrome for being a fan of the man. Just as you mistake yourself for being smart.
Just one small point of clarification. WhenI said he was diminished some, I meant in the eyes of the world. Meaning that the President of the U.S.,arguably the most powerful person in the world went out of his way to do something of such relative unimportance as get the Olympics and couldn’t do it.
Compared to the last President’s shenanigans, I don’t think there’s much that Obama could do that would affect the world’s view of him. As long as he doesn’t blow the planet up, I’d suggest that you stop worrying so much about it.
Rest of the world checking in (part 2). The only party diminished by this is the pathetic bunch who try to make this into some kind of “point” against Obama.
It’s pretty clear to me that in this toxic atmosphere, the 20% ers would have done the following:
Obama goes, Chicago gets Olympics: “THE FIX IS IN! CORRUPTION!”
Obama does not go, Chicago gets Olympics: “FAT LOT OF GOOD HE WAS! USELESS!”
Obama does not go, Chicago does not get Olympics: “WHY DIDN"T HE GO? TRAITOR!”
Obama goes, Chicago does not get Olympics: “OBAMA IS DIMINISHED”
I Actually think that the right was disappointed because they’d rather have used point 1 above.
Errm, dude ? I hate to break it to you but I’m a non-person. And by that I mean I’m not from or living in the US. My dirty little secret is that I’m French (though I consider myself a citizen of the world more than anything). Shit, I don’t even vote. I’m just calling them as I see 'em. Promis, juré.
But please, do feel free to assume I’m partisan in your transoceanic bickerings if it floats your boat. After all, “One of the most hateful propensities of Lilliputian minds is to endow others with their own pettiness.” - Balzac. Certainly beats the crazy and frightening notion that any criticism levelled at you (or, in this case, at people who think like you) could be grounded in anything but irrationality and intellectual dishonesty, amiright ?
In Ireland most if not all of the reports are about the celebrations in Rio. Little to nothing has been talked about re: Obama and the loss to the US.
As I said in another thread, a lot of Americans need to get over themselves. You were one country out of many who were trying for the Olympics. Every country was represented by a Head of State or political leader. Brazil won, all others lost. Outside of the US most of the focus will now be on Rio.
Ah, mate, you’re way off base here. Every country seriously pitching had heads of states or similar present, and like Yojimbo, I can’t say that any foreign media really made any comment about Obama or the US, it’s all about Rio baby. (Of course it’s always been about Rio, I mean really, Rio - sun, fund, Brazilian bikinis. Chicago, funny overweight Americans with odd moustaches…)
Absolutely, the only people who seem to care about this are some rather queer minded political obsessives with an axe to grind (and frankly who give the impression that no matter what the result was, that they’d be whinging on about what Obama did regardless).
One could imagine scenarios which diminished your President, oh say like whinging on in public afterwards or engaging in ridiculous bombast against other countries, and then losing. But making your pretty standard pitch for the home team… eh, utterly unremarkable. Claiming your President is “diminished” in the eyes of the world is self-diminishing nonsense
You DO know you’re pretty much directly quoting Limbaugh here, right?
As you say, the other countries in the running also sent their leaders to plead their cases. Are we really that freaking arrogant that we’re going to send a secretary when everyone else sends the boss?
Because everything else in the Executive branch of our government was completely on hold while he flew to Copenhagen.
It’s not the primary cause, but it’s a gigantic glaring goddamned symptom, and you are either being amazingly disingenuous or YOU are a member of the Friggin’ Idiot Club as well by refusing to recognize this.
Unless the rest of the US benefits in some way from the Olympics being held in Chicago (other than convenient TV scheduling of the big events, presumably) it isn’t really an example of any such thing.
I mean, Chicago is farther away from me than Madrid is from wmfellows. I can’t see any practical reason why I should care if Chicago gets the Olympics.
OTOH, assuming that the rest of the world has lost respect for Obama because the IOC didn’t fall at his feet is just dumb.
Perfect! I said pretty much the same thing on my Facebook page a few hours before the vote. I’m sure they had talking points ready for every scenario, and they all would have been negative. I also agree that the fix/corruption/bribes/intimidation angle was the juicy one they were probably hoping for.
Hey! I don’t have a moustache!
I’m glad Chicago didn’t get it either. I would have been happy, it would have been fun, but I’m too thrilled for Rio to be disappointed.
This is really so much ado about nothing. Why is this such a big deal? As mentioned upthread, we’re overrepresented for the olympics anyway, historically. What, you can’t have a global event anywhere but in the USA, because we’re TEAM AMERICA?