Hijacking Olympic glory for political gain is dangerous

I love sport, but the media’s pop psychology and UK politicians’ bellowing patriotism has cheapened the athletes’ achievement

I saw nothing to justify the hysteria, the sobbing with joy and weeping with ecstasy, of the London media and politicians. The grasping for national pride and pseudo-psychological significance exaggerated the event and cheapened the athletes’ achievement. As for the prime minister asking the Games minister, Jeremy Hunt, to run the NHS “because of the Olympics”, it was worthy of Caligula.

Mayor Boris Johnson’s hilarious speech to the London crowd on Monday shamelessly upstaged David Cameron’s. The latter had modestly suggested the London Games would be remembered “for hundreds of years” and showed Britain could “do great things … and take on the world and, yes, we can win”. Johnson went berserk. He bellowed of a nation in paroxysms of joy, of orgasms on tube trains and songs on sofas, or vice versa. Both men shamelessly hijacked the games, acclaiming a nation on a shining path to collective recovery. They were like Soviet leaders lauding the virtues of higher tractor production.

Hijacking any cultural enterprise to a political goal is dangerous. Johnson should know that those who lived by the Roman mob died by it. He exulted in his uproarious jokes and ridiculed “the doubters and gloomsters”, but he never mentioned his own status as gloomster-in-chief. Only six weeks ago, he was telling Londoners on the tube to get out of town since hell was about to break loose. They did. Johnson must have cost the London economy millions.

No one I know seriously doubted London could stage a successful Olympics, given enough money. The doubts were over value for money, given that it would be immeasurable.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/11/spent-money-olympics-glory-other-purposes