Funnimetric

I plan on boycotting the Olympics, but, then again, I've boycotted every Olympics since 1976 (I don't count the attention I paid to the 1984 games because they were in Los Angeles and, thus, unavoidable). I didn't boycott the Seoul Olypics because of the rust on my Kia or Atlanta because of that modern Nostradamus, Ted Turner. In fact, my Olympic aversion has nothing to do with politics: The Olympics are just deadly boring. All of those "profiles" stuck in between a tiny bit of action; the announcers and their "let's go tos." There's the explosion of events that nobody cares about. I get that people in Bulgaria like handball because they could conduct illicit tournaments in abandoned wherehouses, but synchronized swimming? Somebody tells their little girl to keep practicing their aquatic robot moves so that one day they can be the Olympic laughing stock?

The male-female equivalence kind of bugs me. I imagine that both men and women find female weight lifting disgusting. Honestly, who would advertise during such an event? "We bought a 30 second spot on the female 75 Kilo Cling and Jerk."

The biggest problem, however, is the end of the Cold War for which the Olympics served as proxy (Warm up war?). Remember those watercooler discussions? Inevitably, somebody would interject, as if it were the most revelatory statement, that Communist athletes weren't really amateurs. There was the Olympic episode on Get Smart wherein the good American robot beats the evil Kaos goon. Really, a battle of systems. Until Al Qaeda gets its own relay team, things just won't be the same.

So, Nancy Pelosi wants Bush to Boycott the China Olympics. I don't think it's a bad idea- they deserve it, but it'd be unnecessarily undiplomatic and more than a little hypocritical. We conduct huge amounts of trade with China and China exchanges culturally and academically with American schools, but the president can't attend the Olympic ceremonies? "We're good enough to sell you cheap pants, but..." The Carter boycott was feckless enough, but at least we were, more or less, at war with the Soviet Union.