People Seem to Be Worked Up About This Whole Olympics Thing

Image details: Protests Erupt As Olympic Torch Relay Winds Through San Francisco served by picapp.com

The Olympic Torch arrived in San Francisco yesterday. As expected, there were a bunch of protesters. The torch was rerouted to avoid anti-China hordes. Many of the protesters waved Tibetan flags, even one of the torch-carriers had a Tibetan flag on his wrist. Now, Sen. John McCain has joined Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton calling for President Bush to boycott the opening ceremonies in Beijing. Most of this outcry stems from the recent Chinese reaction to Tibetan protesters.

This all seems very bizarre to me. China’s been jerks — huge jerks — to Tibet for years. “Free Tibet” is a running gag on the Simpsons, for Pete’s sake. Just now we’re getting all upset about this? And the solution is for President Bush to piss off the likely irrational leaders of a monstrous, growing economy with a completely empty gesture that will likely have no effect on the practices of the Chinese government. It’s not that I think China’s in the right. I just don’t think any Olympic boycott is going to do any good (and could possibly do bad.) We’re going to trade with them, but not attend their big outdoors interpretive dance-off. That will show them.

I also think it’s interesting that this whole boycotting the Olympics thing was dead in the water when it was about China basically being complicit in the whole Darfur genocide, but once they start cracking down on monks in neat robes, well, that just couldn’t stand.