The Winter Olympics. Meh.

Depending on how this storm works out, I may or may not be here after tomorrow, but even if I manage to keep the lights on through the next few days, don't expect much commentary on the Winter Olympics in Beijing, which open tomorrow.  Oh, I'm sure there will be a couple of moments worth highlighting, but, given the very fact that they're going to be held in a country that should never have been awarded the Winter Olympics in the first place while COVID - which said country is responsible for - is raging, I expect the Winter Games to be something of a wet blanket.

Bear in mind that Beijing is the worst possible place to hold the Winter Olympics, and not because of the pandemic. Not only is the climate there wrong for outdoor winter sports such as skiing and bobsledding - the Chinese have to produce artificial snow for the ski events - and not only is Beijing an oversized metropolis in comparison to previous Winter Olympic towns like St. Moritz and Lake Placid, the Chinese are planning to monitor reporters and commentators going to Beijing to cover the Games.  And with COVID restrictions in China being as they are, in which the Chinese are aiming for a zero-COVID environment, the Big Brother ethos is likely to be more constricting.  What's worse, the International Olympic Committee had plenty of time, once COVID escaped China, once it became apparent that the Uighurs in Sinkiang were being persecuted and once it became clear that Xi Jinping had Taiwan in his gun sights, to move the Winter Olympics.  Holding them in Beijing now - especially just fourteen years after the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics - is rewarding the Chinese government for bad behavior.  And Bob Costas agrees.

"The IOC deserves all of the disdain and disgust for going back to China yet again," Costas (above) told CNN.  "They're shameless about this stuff. And so, this takes place not only amid COVID, but  . . . the restrictions on press freedom and the sense that everyone there is being monitored in some way."

Costas could have stopped there, but he went on. "We had that feeling in Beijing in 2008. If anything, it’s been ramped up now. It isn't just NBC. Any network that broadcasts big sports is simultaneously in a position of being quasi-journalistic at best. You're reporting on an event but you’re also promoting that event. News organizations like CNN don’t pay a rights fee to cover the White House. NBC pays a huge rights fee along with the production cost. They want people to watch it. It’s a centerpiece of the entire network strategy."

And of course we'll all watch, if only to get or minds off COVID, the weather, and anything Donald Trump says.  Well, we should still be paying attention to Trump.  Because when we look at China under Xi, we could be looking at America under Trump Mark Two.