Milan Meh and Cortina Ennui

So, how do I think Team USA is going to do in the 2026 Winter Olympics, which just opened officially?  Quite frankly, I don't give a twit.  Minneapolis is still under siege, Jeff Bezos' lack of business sense or ethics is destroying Hollywood and one of the nation's great newspapers simultaneously, Steve Bannon is promising voter intimidation to secure Republican victories in the midterm elections in November, it's so cold outside that I feel like I live closer to the Hudson Bay than the Hudson River, and my skin is so dry that my left heel feels like someone rammed a pickax through it!

But hearing how the Vice President of the United States got booed at the opening ceremonies at the Winter Olympics makes me feel a little bit better.

The Winter Olympics continue their march toward the pompous grandiosity that the regular Olympics  achieved a long time ago, the Winter Games this year being held in both Milan, for the indoor events, and Cortina d'Ampezzo, for the outdoor events.  When the Winter Olympics were held in Cortina seventy years ago, the world was a different place and the Winter Olympics were a different sporting event.  Winter Olympic opening ceremonies didn't yet have the blast of bombast that Adolf Hitler introduced in the regular Olympics in Berlin in 1936 (though even Hitler didn't make a big spectacle out of the 1936 Winter Olympics, held in the Bavarian town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen).  The Winter Games were held in a shorter time frame.  Only athletes from naturally snow-prone and ice-prone countries competed.  And everything was held in one place, whereas these Winter Games are held in towns about 245 miles - oops, excuse my ugly Americanism, 400 kilometers - apart.  This is Italian logistics in action?  No wonder the only way Italy could win both world wars was to change sides. 

It's almost 11:30 in the morning on the American East Coast as I type this, and I haven't yet watched a moment of Winter Olympic coverage, but I plan to, given how bitterly cold it is outside and how I have no desire to go out except for a couple of necessary short trips.  I just want to lie on the bed and cuddle up with my cats as I watch the downhill and slalom runs and the bobsled races (and some speed skating, please!).   And this time I hope I don't fall asleep watching the events.  But, given the raw sewage Steve Bannon and the rest of MAGA are flooding the zone with, I doubt I will be able to deliver in this space the sort of savagely witty commentary on these Games, because the whole Olympic movement, sadly, has gone a long way toward satirizing itself.

And no, I still haven't gotten a reply from International Olympic Committee president Kirsty Coventry about moving the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics to a city in another country, like, say, Toronto, but that Olympiad looks to be a major disaster - expect boycotts of American World Cup matches this year as a dry run for what could happen in 2028.  Remember: The 2028 Olympics were awarded to Los Angeles back in 2017, when Trump was in the first year of his first term in the White House, and, given what the International Olympic Committee understood about American politics, people figured that Trump would be long gone by 2028 - either he'd be a one-term President who would be gone by 2021 or a two-term President who would step down by 2025.  No one ever imagined Trump pulling a Grover Cleveland on everyone and possibly still being in office in 2028.  Or maybe Vance will be President then, in which case, he'll be booed a second time if he shows up for those Games.  Or maybe the United States will indeed split into separate countries by then, or maybe California will at least be an independent republic by then even if the U.S. doesn't split up, and then the opening ceremony of the Games will be officiated by California Republic President Eric Swalwell - yeah!

Ahh, who cares?  I've gone past the point of caring myself, having just turned sixty and having seen the athletes of my generation retire from competitive sports and move on to other things.  The Olympics aren't my Olympics anymore.  They belong to a new generation.  I call upon to the youth of the world to have a good time at the Games in Italy, and that includes fans as well as athletes.

Just remember that, if you're planning to attend both indoor events and outdoor events, it's a six-hour trip between the arena and the slopes.  😝