March 17--The United States Olympic Committee has the opportunity to make a humanitarian gesture that also could stand as the formal apology that never was given for its athletes' insultingly boorish behavior 27 years ago.
All it would take is stepping up with aid for the sportsmen and sportswomen of the cyclone-ravaged Pacific island nation of Vanuatu.
The International Olympic Committee announced Tuesday it would join with the Association of National Olympic Committees to donate $500,000 to rebuild sports facilities and the headquarters of the Vanuatu national Olympic committee.
"We want to support the athletes in this region so that they can return to their sporting life as soon as possible, and in such a way give hope to the whole population," IOC President Thomas Bach said in a statement. "Especially in such times, sport can play its part in helping people normalize their lives and rebuilding a shattered society."
The USOC should add a substantial contribution of its own -- sports equipment, paid travel and housing for some Vanuatu athletes at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, coaching aid, anything.
After all, it was U.S. athletes who had spoiled the tiny country's debut on the Olympic stage.
It occurred at the Opening Ceremony of the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul, South Korea.
The U.S. team, which got no guidance from the USOC about what the moment meant to their hosts, responded with stunning cultural insensitivity toward what the Koreans saw as a serious ceremony and toward other countries in the ceremony.
Many athletes in the 700-member U.S. delegation clowned their way through the parade of athletes, some holding goofy signs and wearing Mickey Mouse hats. When they slowed down to mug for the cameras, the U.S. athletes swallowed up two delegations behind them, including the eight marchers from Vanuatu and the 15 from Bahrain.
"The Koreans take the ceremonies very seriously, and so do many of the smaller nations who send teams primarily to be seen in the opening ceremonies," Laurence Chalip, a former University of Chicago professor acting as a cultural observer for the Seoul Olympic Organizing Committee, told me the day after the ceremony.
"For both reasons, the behavior of the U.S. team, particularly in the engulfing of the Vanuatu team, was a questionable way to represent our nation. Some teams will be seen over and over again (in the competition). For some, the opening ceremonies are the only stage."
But the late Robert Helmick, then USOC president, had no clue how offensive it was. Said Helmick: "Some of the athletes carried signs that perhaps were not what organizers looking for strict organization would want, but we have had no complaints."
There would be complaints, leading the IOC to send the USOC a letter describing the Americans' behavior at the opening ceremonies as "scandalous" and saying "it has given to the whole world a very bad impression of your delegation."
Helmick acknowledged the point of the letter but protested the idea the behavior was scandalous and did not apologize for it.
If only he and the USOC could have had the grace of the Vanuatans, whose team leader, Jean Preanut, said, "I was a bit upset but people from other countries who talked to me later were more angered. Americans are Americans. Next time we will ask not to be behind them."
The current USOC leaders, Larry Probst and Scott Blackmun, have put a high priority on removing that "Americans are Americans" image, the idea that the United States simply will act how it wants because it is so big, so rich and so frequently tone deaf to the rest of the world.
The discomfiting start to U.S. sporting relations with Vanuatu is, of course, incidental to the idea that the USOC should help its Olympic cousins in their time of dire need.
Goodwill needs no pretext.
But there is one here, and there could be no better time to recognize past callousness than by showing present generosity.
