Tag Archives: Olympics

Chinese Director: “human rights” interfere with Westerners’performances

Posted on by lmruhland
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Lauren Ruhland, 2008 MCPP intern

A decade ago, director Zhang Yimou’s films were acclaimed in the West but frequently censored in his native China. Since then, he’s fallen back into favor with the Chinese government and directed both the opening and closing ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics.  He told the Chinese press that the Beijiing ceremonies will be difficult to top by Western performers, because their pesky human rights keep getting in the way.  As reported in the Times of London, his experience with Westerners leaves him thinking them lazy and disorganized, because they aren’t willing to sacrifice themselves to the “uniformity” that “brings beauty” to his work:

“It was so troublesome,” he said. “They only work four and a half days each week. Every day there are two coffee breaks, and no-one can suffer any discomfort because of human rights.

…

“You couldn’t criticize them either. They all belong to organizations – some kind of institutions, unions. We do not have that. We can work very hard, and can put up with a lot of pain.

It was hard to pull out selections of Zhang’s interview, because it’s really the whole thing that’s so unnerving.

I’ve only seen one of Zhang’s films (1994′s To Live), but I thought it was a tragicomic indictment of the Cultural Revolution.  (So did China’s censors– the film was banned there.) The venue where I saw it explicitly included it because of its criticism of Chinese bureaucracy.  It was aesthetically pleasing and featured a beautiful story, but Zhang’s comments here are going to color my perspective of it forever.

Are the Olympics fair?

Posted on by razma766
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Kurt Bouwhuis, Mackinac Center Intern

After watching the Olympics, I was blown away by the performances of the athletes from around the world. World records were broken and individual athletes brought home multiple medals.

I do, however, feel that in the presence of all these accomplishments, we may be overlooking something. What about all the countries that brought home only a few medals. Is it fair that some countries win so many medals, while others win so few? What are these successful countries going to do with all the medals? Why not allocate the medals to those who won less? Can you imagine being a country that received the least amount of medals?

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Higher, Faster, Stronger

Posted on by hkmead
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-Hannah Mead, MCPP intern, 2008

I must admit my bias: I cared about gymnastics long before I cared about politics. I still drool over Olympics footage from the Atlanta games and, while I of course root for the U.S. I have nothing but sheer admiration for such athletes as Russia’s Alexei Nemov and Australia’s Ian Thorpe. “Miracle” is one of my favorite movies, and I don’t see how anyone can watch that and not understand what an awful thing a boycott is. I understand that there are deep and complex international issues, but I firmly support U.S. participation in the Beijing Olympics. While the games are about competition, and the teams are national ones, the Olympics should be free from foreign policy machinations.

The Olympics are about country (“Mike Eruzione… I play for the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA”), but not in a strictly political way. The federal government should not be politically involved in everything to do with America the country. My apple pie is American with or without FDA approval. Hamburgers are American with or without USDA-stamped beef. And for the federal government to even consider dashing the hopes and dreams of hundreds of extremely talented American youths is totally awful.

Maybe I’m just extra sensitive because gymnasts particularly face a very narrow window in which they are at their peak. Most are only in their prime for one Olympics. Has anyone seen Carly Patterson recently?

I’m no foreign policy expert; maybe boycotting the Beijing games would have sent some amazing message to China and they’d totally turn around the country. But I doubt it. [On the lighter side: The Beijing Olympics Are They a Trap?] I like to see the games go on in spite of international tensions. It’s sort of a Romeo and Juliet thing: The athletes will compete no matter how much their parent nations squabble. It shows there is something bigger, stronger, more comprehensive, more enduring, more important than government: human spirit.

Improvements of Olympic Proportions

Posted on by hkmead
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-Hannah Mead, MCPP Intern, 2008

Four years ago, I obsessively watched NBC’s frustratingly delayed, hand-picked and limited TV coverage of the Athens summer Olympics. When a necessary two-day trip pulled me away from civilization (read: Internet access), I made calls to the local paper to find out if Michael Phelps was still winning all his races. When I returned home, I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world because I could watch little 4-minute video clips on nbcolympics.com of the highlights of what I’d missed.

Now, I am nearly devastated by the fact that, after four years of waiting, I must spend the 2008 Olympics week at a conference. However, I am greatly encouraged by the long segments of the U.S. Olympic Trials available on nbcolympics, and pleased so far with my experience with Microsoft’s new silverlight. I’m sure I’ll sit in my hotel room and connect wirelessly with my little laptop to watch extensive Olympics coverage — something I wouldn’t have counted on or even necessarily thought of in 2004. And if I were moderately well-off, I would have one of those fancy phones and no doubt watch the whole thing live on it.

The Olympics are really a spectacular marker to note the technological progress we’ve made. Four years is a good length of time: long enough to show drastic changes, and short enough to recall what life was like before. We can’t deny that technology is still improving in leaps and bounds. Maybe in four years, I’ll actually be at the Olympics — no technology could ever be a substitute that.