Time Enough?

Has anyone noticed the news on e-sources like Yahoo lately? Our formerly internationally beloved Canada has became a target for hate, both from within and without. When tax dollars were diverted to pay for an Olympic infrastructure, Canadian social activists rightly cried foul. Our ailing healthcare and educational systems had to take a back seat. Canada responded by legislating against any negative postings levelled against the Olympics in downtown Vancouver or Whistler during the Olympics. Of course, we wouldn't want anything pesky like poverty, education, healthcare or our constitutional right to freedom of speech to get in the way of the rich getting richer, and a handful of athletes obtaining glory. Furthermore, right-wing American rednecks have posted a backlash of threats against all of Canada for those few who aimed threats at the idiotic American figure skater who somehow thought that a self-righteous response to the moronic decision to wear fur would help his already bad publicity. Ironically, the same American gun-toters who support this kind of fashionistic hunting would just as soon gay-bash the clearly metrosexual, if not entirely homosexual, figure skater in any other situation. But in America the rules seem to be clear: patriotism first, homophobia second. The death of a luger even before the games began has been blamed squarely on Canada for not allowing access to the course to international competitors. I must admit, I cannot fathom the logic behind Canada's Olympic decision in that regard, and perhaps the blame is ours. Now that a Japanese luger has been disqualified for having a sled that was too heavy, a rule that judges have no choice but to honour, relations with Japan are sure to suffer too. And the latest? A 'watchdog' from Quebec is taking note of the lack of french amenities at our Canadian Olympics - an almost inevitable side-effect of holding them in the most anglo city of our bilingual country. Every would-be politician with a controversial bone to pick is using the public spectacle of the Olympics as their own private soap box, including me it would seem. It is sad that Canada has chosen to take on the 'honour' of 'having the eyes of the world upon us' in a time of global paranoia when those eyes are usually looking through cross-hairs. The Olympics has done little for Canada but make it a target for hate. But the Olympics is a time-honoured tradition instituted thousands of years ago by the ancient Greeks, a society which gave us theatre, poetry, sculpture, and democracy, and a society whose primary metropolitan centres (Athens, Sparta) spent so many decades in conflict that most of those poets died criticising their own culture, and in tears. Maybe it is time to see this 'time-honoured tradition' laid to rest. Can't we all just get along?

See you in hell,
Shakes.