The IOC delegates who'll choose the site of the 2016 Olympics are reportedly agonizing over the vote. Allow me to ease their pain.Don't vote for Chicago. Send the games to Rio or Tokyo or Timbuktu or Juan Antonio Samaranch's herb garden.
Nothing against Chicago, but winning the Olympics is like buying a chimpanzee. It seems like a good idea in the Copenhagen pet store, then you get it home and it destroys the place.
The Olympics won't exactly destroy Chicago, but they aren't the five-ring circus of joy they're cracked up to. That reality usually doesn't dawn until the circus leaves town and citizens are left to ask the eternal question:
What the heck are we going to do with a velodrome?
It certainly hasn't dawned on Chicago 2016 backers. They've sent everybody but Steve Bartman to Copenhagen to woo IOC members. Perhaps there's a Japanese Oprah, but there's no way the other finalists can match Chicago's star power. The closer is Barack Obama, who could use a win the way things are going back home.
The president has caught the usual "Doesn't he have more important things to do" grief. As if Iran would disarm and Rush Limbaugh would endorse nationalized health care if only Obama hadn't jetted to Copenhagen.
The world's problems will still be there when he gets back, which gets us to the heart of the issue. Do we really need more problems?
By we I mean taxpayers. I'd like to believe the Olympics aren't going to cost the public a penny. I'd also like to believe the e-mail informing me I'm entitled to $89,000 from a deposed Nigerian dictator.I liked the prospect of a Chicago Olympics until it occurred to me that they would be held in Chicago. Mayor Richard Daley says the games will cost $3.3 billion, but they will actually make $500 million once the last ticket and official Olympic toilet paper rights are sold.
The key word to remember here is "Daley," who was last seen trying to get the names of 19 dead Chicagoans on the IOC voting roll.
London initially said the 2012 Summer Olympics could cost $4.9 billion. That's now up to $13 billion and growing.
Vancouver said the 2010 Winter Olympics wouldn't cost a penny more than $600 million. Auditors now put it at $2.5 billion.
And that's London and Vancouver, two cities where former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich isn't in charge of the accounting department. Blago finally got pinched in Illinois, but Chicago would be the most corrupt Olympic city since, well, Beijing.
The difference is Beijing could run up a $40 billion price tag because anyone who had a problem with it was killed. Even Daley can't do that.
He also can't bring in a major project for less than double what it was supposed to cost. After all the patronage and payoffs are in, the 2016 Olympics will probably be $10 billion over budget. All of which means only one thing:
Bailout!
We've assumed the debt of banks, auto makers and mortgage companies, so why not the Olympics? Especially since the point man in Friday's sales pitch is from Chicago.
[Chicago's] a great city, but what would you rather see, the girl from Ipanema or Oprah in a thong?I'm all for Obama making the trip. It's part of the job, since getting an Olympics is like getting five World Cups, and you don't even have to watch soccer. There's the initial euphoria if your city wins, then the realities start to set in.
If you ask the average Athenian if the 2004 Olympics were worth the hassle, they'd shrug and point to the softball fields that are now vacant lots. If you ask the average Beijing resident if the 2008 Olympics were worth it, they'd get their hands chopped off for pointing in the wrong direction.
Once you get past the Obamas, apathy is already setting in around Chicago. A Chicago Tribune poll found 45 percent support the Olympic quest and 45 percent would rather let Rio de Janeiro have the headache. For some reason they are skeptical of politicians' promises.
Polls in Rio show 85 percent of citizens want the Olympics. They probably won't feel that way in 15 years, but for now getting the games would be nirvana. But forget the impending debt, corruption and security concerns.
How will a Chicago Olympics help you, the average American, enjoy the summer of '16?
To most of us, the Olympics are merely a three-week television postcard. Rio or Madrid would make for exotic escapist viewing. Chicago would be Chicago .
It's a great city, but what would you rather see, the girl from Ipanema or Oprah in a thong?
If the prospect of Blago carrying the torch into the Opening Ceremony doesn't scare IOC voters, that certainly should.
