SAN DIEGO — Boycott is not an Olympic sport.
We should not make it one.
But some human rights groups are calling for the U.S. to boycott the February Winter Olympics in China.
And if the International Olympic Committee keeps it up, there may be a call by the numerous activists among us to do the same at the Tokyo Summer Games in July.
(Of course if COVID-19, which isn't boycotting Tokyo, continues its surge there, The Games again may be canceled, anyway).
Jimmy Carter's presidency didn't have much backbone, but when he ordered the United States' boycott of the 1980 Moscow Summer Games, it was without deep thought by an intelligent man, and perhaps the worst mistake of his four-year White House stay, memorable for being unmemorable.
With that, Russia — and every Eastern Bloc country except Romania — refused to compete in the 1984 L.A. Summer Olympics, so Carter's whammy was doubled.
It would be ideal to see politics stay out of international athletics, but that has become impossible since Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their black-gloved fists in 1968 Mexico City, heightened by the slaughter of Israeli athletes in 1984 Munich.
Athletes compete for themselves. They work their tails off for years to reach the Olympic goal. But there also is a flag attached. Anthems are played and flags are raised when they win gold medals
As for China, Beijing held the Summer Games in 2008. Were there no civil rights violations there prior to that? Is anything new?
The United States has played host to five Olympics, three Summer, two Winter. Has America never been guilty of human rights violations? Civil War? Slavery? Treatment of Native Americans? Children locked in cages at the border?
Japan's civil rights record prior to and during WWII was way beyond brutal. England recently held an Olympics. Are you familiar with the history of Great Britain?
If you want to punish a certain country because of its politics or human rights violations, don't do business with that country. Hypocrites.
The IOC has declared it will punish any Olympic athlete who wears a BLM shirt, genuflects, or raises a fist against racism during the anthem. It has yet to say exactly what it will do to these people hoping for a better world, but will take it on a case-by-case basis.
It may all be moot. They've already delayed the Tokyo Games back a year, and if the COVID-19 situation there doesn't improve real soon, cancellation will come again — this time for good, in Japan.
On to 2024 and Paris, home of the guillotine and slavery, once abolished, reinstated by Napoleon, and abolished again.
There are gallons of pot/kettle hypocrisy here. Politicians do not compete in sports. Athletes do. And they should be allowed to.
It's awfully hard to find the ideal place. Nothing in the history of the printed word is more fictional than Utopia.
Even the Garden of Eden had its difficulties.
