OMFG forty years!!!

And the next spectacular olympics will begin.   How edifying.  I don't know how to say this, but...  big deal.

Really. 

I was a starry-eyed kid when I got what had to be THE dream job of a lifetime working in the olympic village.  And it turned out to be the nightmare of my life.  I felt incredibly honoured.  And formed freindships that lasted for decades.  But there were downsides, and the fact is...    it was so fucking political, and we were caught up in the issues of the day, which....  surprise!...  still exist and never got resolved.  How's that for 'progress'?

No, am not going to go into a golden hazed view back to a summer that began so incredibly well, and ended in tragedy that I witnessed, and still can't really get over.  I only wrote one piece much later in the Munich section of this blog that captured how we were feeling:  'Change'.  And whaddaya know, not much did.

Oh yeah, apartheid got abolished...   decades later.  And a couple of other things.

But mostly?  Not so much, boyo.

And all of a sudden, there's this thing in US politics about....  Romney 'saving' the olympics.  Which I know little about.  But I know one thing:  when 'Murka decides or 'gets' to host the olympics...   look out.  You got a propaganda machine that was waaaay beyond anything that was actually fair or balanced, or came anywhere near 'sportsmanship'. 

And gawwd help you if you were Germany in the 70's and decided to host them, because, y'know they had that disastrous hosting of the games in the 30's, and Hitler presiding, and it was their chance to get over that.  'Which became the main problem in the end.

From the get-go, back then, the US press, (speak Newsweek and Time magazines), were rabid.  Most articles began with 'Munich, which is only several miles from Dachau...'  And they were  'we want 'friendly games, we have to get past this.'  Well, that ended well, didn't it?  Because they went so lax, the security went way down.

Just as example, I ran across people from home and could borrow them my id pass to get into the village although they looked nothing like me, and could still get in, and they would stay overnight.  It was that lax, for the reasons above.  Everyone did that.

We didn't have an inkling of how dangerous that was.

Thanks to the press, the Germans were friggin' terrified to have tight security.  Because, y'know, how would it look? 

And it became a terrible tragedy.

Since then, the games became far more 'secure', and am sure Mr. Romney turned his home base into a nice looking high security prison.

It would be an interesting thing to look into, but journalists there are mostly just journamalists.

And, ya know...  USA!  (rinse wash and repeat till ya feel good  and take a lesson:  no athlete does it for his or her country, they do it for themselves. And no one as a people has a vicarious win.  It was the accomplishment of an idividual.   With a promise of big money meanwhile.  The rest is pure bullshit. 1972 may have been a simpler time, and the money sucked, but there was that too.)

´The entire topic has become toxic to me of late.  I felt that something, this golden dream of nations coming together and people taliking with common goals got sullied and died that year, and I mourn it.  It won' t come back and if you think 'Murkins were in on it, wow, you are so wrong.  Stayed in their cliques...  from Yale and Havid, and looked down their nose at everyone else.  Disgusting.  How are you supposed to learn about anything if you don't talk to the great unwashed?

Stephen Colbert has been really weird all year...  creating a super-pac, but it was a ruse to get people to realise what that means.  And he named horse dressage as the summer olympics game to watch.  Because, as fake rethug....  well Romney has a horse competing in that category, and his wife has ms, and it is therapeutic for her.  Who do you know has the money to have a thoroughbred horse for his wife as therapy and it qualifies for the olympics in dressage? 

Rachel Maddow did a number on a recent slot on her show all about how out of touch he is, and a fundraiser in the Hamptons.  Colbert nailed it.

Because, y'know, he's Mr. Olympics.  Shifty-eyed, stuttering animatronic that he is.

I think I can throw up now...