OP-ED COLUMNIST. The Crying Games. By FRANK BRUNI. Somewhere between the Zika
stories, the doping stories and the stories about what a fetid, toxic swamp Rio
really is, I got the message: I was supposed to feel cynical about these
Olympics, the way we feel cynical about pretty much everything these days.. I
was supposed to marvel at our talent for making messes, cutting corners,
evading responsibility, procrastinating. Rio was a testament to that, both as
the host of the Games and as a sublime, wretched theater of humanity. All the
promises we fail to keep, all the plans that go awry: They were and would be on
vivid display. I was supposed to shake my head in disgust. Sigh in frustration.
Instead I cried, and I mean good tears. It was Monday morning, and I was
telling someone what he'd missed on Sunday night: how the American swimmer
Michael Phelps defied age and his own stabs at self-destruction to swim toward
yet another gold, in a men's relay. How the American gymnast Simone Biles, in
the team qualifying round, responded to the gaudy expectations for her not by
crumbling but by meeting, even surpassing, every one of them. And then there
was that tiny wisp of a Brazilian girl -- 4-foot-4, 16 years old -- who floated
onto the balance beam, whirled the length of it and turned in a near perfect
routine that no one expected. The roar from her hometown crowd was so loud, so
true, that I'm certain it crossed time zones. I bet it traversed the
stratosphere. No lottery winner, no matter the purse, has ever matched the glow
of elation on her face. I hadn't even reached the part about the British
gymnast who tumbled onto her head, stood up dazed and kept on going when I
myself had to stop, because I was suddenly so choked up that I couldn't get
another word out. Don't tell me what's wrong with the Olympics. Let me tell you
what's right with them. In a world rife with failure and bitter compromise,
they're dedicated to dreaming and to the proposition that limits are entirely
negotiable, because they reflect only what has been done to date and not what's
doable in time. They make the case that part of being fully alive is pushing
yourself as far as you can go. Every Olympic record, every personal best and
every unlikely comeback is an individual achievement, yes, but it's also a
universal example and metaphor. The swimmer Dana Vollmer, a gold medalist in
2012, stopped training, became a mother and attended to her newborn. But the
pool still beckoned, and last weekend, just 17 months after giving birth, she
won a silver and a bronze in Rio. Good for her. Good for all women who don't
want to obey some timeline that they never signed on to or stay in a box of
someone else's construction. These champions usually aren't children of extreme
privilege. Biles was separated from her mother, who battled drug and alcohol
addiction, at an early age. Others had worse odds and more daunting setbacks.
But they had a drive more powerful than that. They swapped resentment for
goals. And they worked. By God, did they work. We tend to marvel at their
freakish gifts, but we should marvel even more at their freakish devotion.
That's what made the difference. They invested hour upon hour, day after day.
They sacrificed idle time and other pursuits. They honed a confidence that
eludes most of us and summoned a poise that we can only imagine. They took
risks, big ones. And they pressed on, because there was this thing that they
wanted so very, very badly and the only way to know if they could get it was to
put everything on the line. I'm no na? f. I know that there's another, darker
side to this -- that some of them are overly preoc'cup'ied with fame, with
riches. At least they're earning it. I know that there are flaws in the system,
even corruption. I'm reading and I'm hearing plenty about that, about the inane
remarks that NBC's commentators have made, and about the excessive commercial
breaks that the network builds into the prime-time telecast. A certain
crassness and greed have taken over. It's true. But I fear that with the
Olympics, as with so much else, we've let the language of complaint supplant
the language of wonder, and there's wonder aplenty here. Just watch Phelps kick
or Biles vault heavenward, a force of will seemingly bound for the stars. Just
think about what it means to aim that high, commit that much and invite the
eyes of the world to see it all come together or all fall apart. If that
doesn't put a lump in your throat and a tear in your eye, you're made of stone.
I invite you to follow me on Twitter (@FrankBruni) and join me on Facebook.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter
(@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter. .
On Aug 11, 2016, at 12:26 AM, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Back in my sighted life I always took in as much of the Olympics as I
was able, what with working and family. But for many years in my life
as a blind man, I have paid little attention to the very visual
events.
This year my wife and her sister are busy recording great gobs of the
Olympics and viewing them into the wee hours of the night. Both were
very athletic in their youth, and are big time supporters of women's
events. And despite my feelings about the over production, over
commercialization that has taken over this world-wide ammeter event, I
have to say that it is so very refreshing to hear the youthful
enthusiasm and exuberance of these young men and women. I marvel that
there are still such decent sounding people growing up among this crab
grass called World Politics. I watched/listened to the American
gymnasts as they laughed and shouted upon winning the Gold. I
actually had a silly grin on my face, and a tear of joy for them in my
eye.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/10/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
David Zirin's Brazil's Dance With The Devil is on Bookshare. It is
fascinating and disturbing reading. Thanks to whoever it was, on this list,
who mentioned it.
Miriam
Boykoff writes: "It might not be captured on primetime Olympic coverage,
but
Brazilians are welcoming the Games with mass protest."
Rio, Brazil. (photo: Jules Boykoff/Jacobin)
Brazil's Olympic Calamity
By Jules Boykoff, Jacobin
10 August 16
It might not be captured on primetime Olympic coverage, but Brazilians are
welcoming the Games with mass protest.
When Brazil’s interim president Michel Temer announced the opening of the
2016 Rio Summer Olympics on Friday, he was met with boos. Speaking as fast
as a voiceover at the end of a pharmaceutical commercial, it was an awkward
scene. The choreographers of the ceremony launched fireworks to mask the
crowd’s disdain, but discontent with the Olympics extends far beyond
Maracanã Stadium. While smiley-faced Games-goers fill the Olympic suites,
thousands of Brazilians are taking to the streets.
This was obvious as the Olympic torch made its way toward the ceremony. In
Angra dos Reis, protesters even managed to extinguish the flame, forcing
torchbearers to scurry to safer havens in a nearby van. In Duque de Caixas,
just north of Rio, demonstrators pelted torchbearers with stones before
cops
responded with rubber bullets and pepper spray.
Once the torch arrived in Rio, protesters came out in droves. So did the
police, who used tear gas and stun grenades to slice a route for it to
pass.
When the torch whisked past me at Praça Mauá, I could barely see it behind
a
wall of military police.
One torchbearer, Tarcisio Carlo Rodrigues Gomes, even used his moment in
the
spotlight to protest. After finishing his shift, he yanked down his shorts,
revealing leopard-print underwear and the words “Fora Temer” (“Temer Out”)
scrawled on his butt cheeks in bright white paint.
“Fora Temer” was the rallying cry of an enormous mobilization along
Copacabana Beach on August 5, the morning of the opening ceremony. Brazil’s
president is extremely unpopular in Brazil, with one recent poll putting
his
approval rating at 11 percent.
As Glenn Greenwald and Eric Lau recently pointed out in the Intercept,
Temer
is accused of a staggering array of bribery schemes — he couldn’t run for
president even if he wanted to, thanks to the recent ban he received for
violating campaign finance laws.
Protesters along Copacabana highlighted all this and more. Unions, workers,
students, pensioners, feminist organizations, housing activists, indigenous
peoples, and anti-Olympics stalwarts joined forces to create a massive
throng that pulsed with creativity. The protest, which drew fifteen
thousand
people, was coordinated by worker and leftist groups, including Brasil
Popular, Esquerda Socialista, and Povo Sem Medo.
The mood was festive. A small orchestra played a version of “Carmina
Burana”
with uproarious “Fora Temer” lyrics. Activists from the Comitê Popular da
Copa e das Olimpíadas (The Popular Committee of the World Cup and
Olympics),
who have long been protesting against the mega-event machine, carried a
banner reading “#CalamidadeOlímpica” (“#OlympicCalamity”). The Corrente
Socialista dos Trabalhadores, a socialist workers’ group, wielded a sign
that read, “Não a Olimpíadas” (“No to the Olympics”).
Many activists connected the Olympic dots between the wider political
crisis
and the Olympic Games. Some wore t-shirts bearing the Olympic rings filled
in by the letters G-O-L-P-E (C-O-U-P). Numerous flags read “Fora Temer”
with
the Olympic rings standing in for the “o” on “Fora.”
One man held a cardboard sign with the handwritten phrases “Rio2016 Coup /
We’re Not Happy / Fora Temer” written on it. Another activist walked around
with homemade Olympic rings connected with metal wiring featuring a photo
of
Temer and the moniker “golpista.” At one point protesters took over the
site
of the official Olympic rings on Copacabana Beach, snapping photographs
with
their “Fora Temer” signs in hand while Olympic tourists stood by in
bewilderment.
Other activists seized the Olympic moment, writing signs in English for the
global media to read. One said, “We don’t want a torch / We want out
homes!”
The lack of housing in Rio, as well as the brass-knuckle evictions that the
Games galvanized, were major themes. On the beach, protesters from Jogos da
Exclusão (Exclusion Games) set up a shrine highlighting displacement, with
messaging in both Portuguese and English.
Standing nearby, one demonstrator told me it was ironic that while the team
of Olympic refugee athletes was being widely celebrated, the Rio Games had
created numerous internal refugees, displaced in the name of five-ring
profit-making.
Later, as the opening ceremony unfolded, Bloomberg journalist Tariq Panja
put a fine point on it, tweeting: “Perhaps the former residents of Vila
Autodromo will be invited to join the Olympic Refugee Team at Tokyo 2020.”
Vila Autódromo is one favela community that found itself in front of the
Olympic steamroller.
The afternoon brought another sizable mobilization, this one more focused
on
the Olympics under the banner Jogos da Exclusão. Around a thousand
activists
gathered at Praça Sáenz Peña, located close to the Maracanã. During the
2014
World Cup final, the same square was the site of brutal police repression
of
protesters who raised questions about hosting the world’s soccer jamboree
on
the public dime.
Urban geographer Chris Gaffney attended both mobilizations. Crystallizing a
critique bubbling through the afternoon protest, he told me, “As Rio is
glittering before the world, it has handed over the city to the
International Olympic Committee [IOC] and private interests at the expense
of taking care of the basic needs of the population.” He added, “The
Exclusion Games protest was a clear note in a cacophonic symphony of
destruction that has defined Rio’s mega-event preparations over the past
decade.”
Whereas the police presence at the Fora Temer protest was relatively light,
it was unmistakably intense in the afternoon event. Emerging from the metro
station and into the praça, I was met with a wall of police decked out in
riot gear. Periodically they would move about in lockstep formation, an arm
latched to the shoulder of the cop in front of them. Other security
officials encircled the square. Later, busloads of additional riot police
arrived. At one point a police helicopter circled overhead.
When the protest transformed into a street march, cops created a tight
envelope around the marchers, keeping a special eye on activists using
black-bloc tactics, who at one point burned a flag bearing the Olympic
rings. Halfway through the march, a squadron appeared on horses, channeling
the flow of the protest march.
Police presence in Brazil is no trivial matter. Amnesty International
recently reported that in the months leading up to the Games, Rio de
Janeiro
has seen a 103 percent increase in police killings. Since Rio was awarded
the Games back in 2009, security officials in have killed more than 2,600
people. Ahead of the Games, activists delivered a strong message to Rio
organizers, placing forty body bags on their front stoop, reflecting the
number of people killed by police in May alone.
A majority of the victims of police violence are young cariocas of color.
Amnesty International found that between 2010 and 2013, 79 percent of those
killed by on-duty police officers in Rio were black and 75 percent were
young, between fifteen and twenty-nine years old.
Activists taking to the streets during the opening ceremony were fully
aware
of this history. Numerous chants alluded to police violence. One massive
banner read, “Abaixo o massacre olímpico!” and then in English, “No to the
Olympic massacre!” Although some minor skirmishes emerged, and cops used
pepper spray and tear gas on protesters at Praça Afonso Pena, the march
went
relatively smoothly.
At the protest Brazilian human rights lawyer Andrea Florence told me, “The
Olympic Games promised to promote a peaceful society, social inclusion, and
human dignity. What we have seen in Rio is the complete opposite . . . The
protest highlights what happens when the Olympics come to town.”
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valid.
Rio, Brazil. (photo: Jules Boykoff/Jacobin)
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/08/olympics-protests-rio-temer-coup-brazil/h
ttps://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/08/olympics-protests-rio-temer-coup-brazil/
Brazil's Olympic Calamity
By Jules Boykoff, Jacobin
10 August 16
It might not be captured on primetime Olympic coverage, but Brazilians are
welcoming the Games with mass protest.
hen Brazil’s interim president Michel Temer announced the opening of the
2016 Rio Summer Olympics on Friday, he was met with boos. Speaking as fast
as a voiceover at the end of a pharmaceutical commercial, it was an awkward
scene. The choreographers of the ceremony launched fireworks to mask the
crowd’s disdain, but discontent with the Olympics extends far beyond
Maracanã Stadium. While smiley-faced Games-goers fill the Olympic suites,
thousands of Brazilians are taking to the streets.
This was obvious as the Olympic torch made its way toward the ceremony. In
Angra dos Reis, protesters even managed to extinguish the flame, forcing
torchbearers to scurry to safer havens in a nearby van. In Duque de Caixas,
just north of Rio, demonstrators pelted torchbearers with stones before
cops
responded with rubber bullets and pepper spray.
Once the torch arrived in Rio, protesters came out in droves. So did the
police, who used tear gas and stun grenades to slice a route for it to
pass.
When the torch whisked past me at Praça Mauá, I could barely see it behind
a
wall of military police.
One torchbearer, Tarcisio Carlo Rodrigues Gomes, even used his moment in
the
spotlight to protest. After finishing his shift, he yanked down his shorts,
revealing leopard-print underwear and the words “Fora Temer” (“Temer Out”)
scrawled on his butt cheeks in bright white paint.
“Fora Temer” was the rallying cry of an enormous mobilization along
Copacabana Beach on August 5, the morning of the opening ceremony. Brazil’s
president is extremely unpopular in Brazil, with one recent poll putting
his
approval rating at 11 percent.
As Glenn Greenwald and Eric Lau recently pointed out in the Intercept,
Temer
is accused of a staggering array of bribery schemes — he couldn’t run for
president even if he wanted to, thanks to the recent ban he received for
violating campaign finance laws.
Protesters along Copacabana highlighted all this and more. Unions, workers,
students, pensioners, feminist organizations, housing activists, indigenous
peoples, and anti-Olympics stalwarts joined forces to create a massive
throng that pulsed with creativity. The protest, which drew fifteen
thousand
people, was coordinated by worker and leftist groups, including Brasil
Popular, Esquerda Socialista, and Povo Sem Medo.
The mood was festive. A small orchestra played a version of “Carmina
Burana”
with uproarious “Fora Temer” lyrics. Activists from the Comitê Popular da
Copa e das Olimpíadas (The Popular Committee of the World Cup and
Olympics),
who have long been protesting against the mega-event machine, carried a
banner reading “#CalamidadeOlímpica” (“#OlympicCalamity”). The Corrente
Socialista dos Trabalhadores, a socialist workers’ group, wielded a sign
that read, “Não a Olimpíadas” (“No to the Olympics”).
Many activists connected the Olympic dots between the wider political
crisis
and the Olympic Games. Some wore t-shirts bearing the Olympic rings filled
in by the letters G-O-L-P-E (C-O-U-P). Numerous flags read “Fora Temer”
with
the Olympic rings standing in for the “o” on “Fora.”
One man held a cardboard sign with the handwritten phrases “Rio2016 Coup /
We’re Not Happy / Fora Temer” written on it. Another activist walked around
with homemade Olympic rings connected with metal wiring featuring a photo
of
Temer and the moniker “golpista.” At one point protesters took over the
site
of the official Olympic rings on Copacabana Beach, snapping photographs
with
their “Fora Temer” signs in hand while Olympic tourists stood by in
bewilderment.
Other activists seized the Olympic moment, writing signs in English for the
global media to read. One said, “We don’t want a torch / We want out
homes!”
The lack of housing in Rio, as well as the brass-knuckle evictions that the
Games galvanized, were major themes. On the beach, protesters from Jogos da
Exclusão (Exclusion Games) set up a shrine highlighting displacement, with
messaging in both Portuguese and English.
Standing nearby, one demonstrator told me it was ironic that while the team
of Olympic refugee athletes was being widely celebrated, the Rio Games had
created numerous internal refugees, displaced in the name of five-ring
profit-making.
Later, as the opening ceremony unfolded, Bloomberg journalist Tariq Panja
put a fine point on it, tweeting: “Perhaps the former residents of Vila
Autodromo will be invited to join the Olympic Refugee Team at Tokyo 2020.”
Vila Autódromo is one favela community that found itself in front of the
Olympic steamroller.
The afternoon brought another sizable mobilization, this one more focused
on
the Olympics under the banner Jogos da Exclusão. Around a thousand
activists
gathered at Praça Sáenz Peña, located close to the Maracanã. During the
2014
World Cup final, the same square was the site of brutal police repression
of
protesters who raised questions about hosting the world’s soccer jamboree
on
the public dime.
Urban geographer Chris Gaffney attended both mobilizations. Crystallizing a
critique bubbling through the afternoon protest, he told me, “As Rio is
glittering before the world, it has handed over the city to the
International Olympic Committee [IOC] and private interests at the expense
of taking care of the basic needs of the population.” He added, “The
Exclusion Games protest was a clear note in a cacophonic symphony of
destruction that has defined Rio’s mega-event preparations over the past
decade.”
Whereas the police presence at the Fora Temer protest was relatively light,
it was unmistakably intense in the afternoon event. Emerging from the metro
station and into the praça, I was met with a wall of police decked out in
riot gear. Periodically they would move about in lockstep formation, an arm
latched to the shoulder of the cop in front of them. Other security
officials encircled the square. Later, busloads of additional riot police
arrived. At one point a police helicopter circled overhead.
When the protest transformed into a street march, cops created a tight
envelope around the marchers, keeping a special eye on activists using
black-bloc tactics, who at one point burned a flag bearing the Olympic
rings. Halfway through the march, a squadron appeared on horses, channeling
the flow of the protest march.
Police presence in Brazil is no trivial matter. Amnesty International
recently reported that in the months leading up to the Games, Rio de
Janeiro
has seen a 103 percent increase in police killings. Since Rio was awarded
the Games back in 2009, security officials in have killed more than 2,600
people. Ahead of the Games, activists delivered a strong message to Rio
organizers, placing forty body bags on their front stoop, reflecting the
number of people killed by police in May alone.
A majority of the victims of police violence are young cariocas of color.
Amnesty International found that between 2010 and 2013, 79 percent of those
killed by on-duty police officers in Rio were black and 75 percent were
young, between fifteen and twenty-nine years old.
Activists taking to the streets during the opening ceremony were fully
aware
of this history. Numerous chants alluded to police violence. One massive
banner read, “Abaixo o massacre olímpico!” and then in English, “No to the
Olympic massacre!” Although some minor skirmishes emerged, and cops used
pepper spray and tear gas on protesters at Praça Afonso Pena, the march
went
relatively smoothly.
At the protest Brazilian human rights lawyer Andrea Florence told me, “The
Olympic Games promised to promote a peaceful society, social inclusion, and
human dignity. What we have seen in Rio is the complete opposite . . . The
protest highlights what happens when the Olympics come to town.”
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
