Does anyone at the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee think through some of the things they announce? Do they understand there is a world out there beyond the 50 states?
Do they care? Do they understand this is why the rest of the world often — and for good reason — thinks the Americans are self-righteous, self-centered and deserving of approbation and scorn?
The rest of the world hates it when we imperiously and sanctimoniously climb up and seize what we believe is the moral high ground and tell all the little people — indeed, lecture them — about what to do.
When are we ever going to stop? Ever?
IOC president Thomas Bach at this week’s virtual executive board meeting. Athletes' Commission chair Kirsty Coventry is at the bottom of the screen opposite Bach // IOC / Flickr
Let’s imagine. It’s the 2022 Beijing Olympic Winter Games (assuming they happen) and, given the new dictates from the USOPC that athletes can “peacefully” protest without worry from them (that is, the USOPC), a newly minted American medal winner opts on the podium to demonstrate against the Chinese government’s treatment of that country’s Muslim minority Uighur population. In Beijing, mind you, deliberately, provocatively but assuredly “peacefully,” from a First Amendment perspective, in full view of the Chinese authorities. How’s that likely to go over?
“I can’t imagine,” USOPC chief executive Sarah Hirshland told Associated Press, “that kneeling or raising a fist would be considered” inappropriate.
Pardon?
Let’s imagine further. Isn’t there a coherent argument that such a demonstration would be considered a call to action if not more? An incitement? If you were the Chinese, isn’t that what you would argue? Do you think the Chinese authorities would be more likely, or less, to deem such a provocation “peaceful”?
This is but one of the vexing and insoluble problems with the set of pronouncements that came forth Thursday from the USOPC, from what was styled the 1/ USOPC’s —> 2/ Athletes’ Advisory Council’s —> 3/ Team USA Council on Racial and Social Justice’s —> 4/ Protests and Demonstrations Steering Committee, and in turn an open letter to U.S. athletes from Hirshland.
Before turning to substance, two questions about all this process. Some level of process is understandable. But this is a lot of process. So:
1/ Why?
2/ What are the administrators at the USOPC doing to earn hundreds of thousands per year if there are focus groups led by activist athletes and university professors driving the sled?
OK, substance:
To begin, the IOC has shown little interest in changing Rule 50, which bans “political, religious or racial propaganda” around Olympic sites during the Games.
In October, Thomas Bach, the IOC president, made plain once again his position that the Olympics were not the place for a “marketplace of demonstrations.” Last January, the IOC made it clear that kneeling or raising a fist on the podium was a form of demonstration that would not be tolerated.
The carefully drafted white paper that 4/ the protests committee produced does not mention the word “podium.” But you’d best believe that’s what it’s about.
As Moushami Robinson, chair of 3/ the council, told the New York Times in an article published Friday, “When you specify kneeling and you talk about fists when you’re defining what protest can and can’t be, you’re saying you don’t want Black athletes to come,” a statement that seems open to question considering there are 206 national Olympic committees and many field athletes who are people of color.
She added, in another statement also open to entirely differing views, “The podium belongs to the three athletes who make it to that spot … it is their time to express or not express, to do or not do, to stand or not stand, in that moment that they’ve earned.”
The Times’ coverage of this issue, in opting to select her quotes along with the others that it printed, is the sort of thing that further drives the USA-centricness (to coin a word) of this matter.
It’s so unbalanced and, accordingly, unhelpful.
There was nary a word of dissent in the piece, In this context “dissent” perversely meaning status quo, support for the IOC’s position.
In fact, there is considerable if not overwhelming support for the IOC’s position. So not to report it is absurd if not an abdication of journalistic responsibility. A different column entirely but — fake news, hello.
From the AP story, this from Robinson: “Not only has the U.S. athlete family been waiting on something that speaks to who we are but we know the world was waiting on us for guidance as to how we can get this right.”
How do we “know” this? There’s no evidence in the story of any sort for this bald assertion.
From the Times, quoting World Athletics president Sebastian Coe:
“I support the right of athletes to be a part of the world we live in, and I don’t think we can have it both ways,” Coe told reporters Thursday in a conference call. “As long as they do it respectfully, with due deference that there will be other athletes on that podium with them, I am not going to get sleepless nights on this.”
What the Times should have done —in the interest of fairness and balance — but didn’t:
Coe’s comments Thursday were just the latest. He said in early October, “I’ve been very clear that if an athlete wishes to take a knee on a podium then I’m supportive of that.” Predictably, the IOC president was asked Monday at his own news conference about Coe’s stance. Bach said:
“Concerning the position of the President of World Athletics, Sebastian Coe, I can maybe quote the marketing and advertising rules of World Athletics as they are in force from the 23rd of November 2019. And they say in [Book C7.1] point 1.3.5:
“ ‘Political/Religious Marketing: Both political (I.e. the promotion of any political parties, associations, movements, ideas or any other political cause) and religious (I.e. the promotion of religions, movements, ideas or other religious causes) marketing are prohibited.’
“I have nothing to add to this at this moment in time.”
You would maybe say there that Bach treated Coe like Vince Carter dunked on 7-foot-2 Frederic Weis of France at the 2000 Sydney Games. No mercy.
In that same story, the Times reported (without attribution), that “some observers said the USOPC’s announcement could significantly shape that conversation,” meaning a potential Rule 50 change.
Because the U.S. is a big market and a big Olympic committee, “it does make a difference in terms of what the discourse is going to be at the IOC around this issue,” Han Xiao, chair of 2/ the AAC, told the paper. “Especially if other countries with systemic racism or marginalized populations follow the USOPC’s lead and feel more emboldened to take a similar stance.”
This is the journalistic equivalent of throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing if it sticks. What countries? What evidence might there be for this proposition?
Fair reporting here might be to note that an overwhelming number of Australian athletes surveyed this year by that nation’s athletes’ commission— 80 percent of 496 — said messages of personal or political protest should not be delivered in Olympic competition or on the podium.
Australia, of course, has a long history of systemic racism and a marginalized native population. The issue of Olympic protest carries special weight there, too, because while the world knows the American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos from their protest in Mexico City in 1968, the third person on the stand was the silver medalist Peter Norman, an Aussie.
Turning back to 3/, the Council, a 44-member “athlete-led” group (44!) convened in August. It was, per the USOPC, “formed to address the rules and systems in the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic movements that create barriers to progress.” That’s from the first paragraph. So traditionally that means it’s important.
The way the English language works is that when you say “the rules and systems in the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic movements,” you mean in the United States. Not anywhere else.
Moving to the third paragraph of the same release:
“The product of athlete town halls, individual athlete discussions and ongoing meetings with outside experts about systemic racial and social injustice present in our country …”
Again, “our country.”
It’s entirely reasonable for the rest of the world to expect us to focus on our challenges. That would be fine.
What would have been fine, too, is for 4/ the protests committee to have said, you want to raise a fist or take a knee at the U.S. Trials — go ahead. But at the Games, it’s the IOC’s rules and we have to play by them.
What also would have been more than fine — indeed, a great solution — would be to have proposed the convening, amid the Tokyo or Beijing Games, of a high-level forum, led in part by the USOPC and its athletes, aimed at addressing concerns raised by Rule 50 in the 2020s.
But no.
The problem lies in what 4/ the protests committee did, what others elsewhere consistently and reasonably find fault in Americans for doing — telling the IOC what to do. What the committee did was a lot of pronouncing. Maybe offering to do a lot of listening would have been w-a-y better.
Some context, because nothing like the proclamations from the USOPC gets dropped into a world stage without some context of who we are as Americans, what we’re doing now and where we’ve been. The Olympic scene, yes. But more, much more.
For years, the IOC and USOC, as it was then called, were locked in a battle over marketing and revenue rights — the IOC, driven by European interests in particular, in full resentment mode over perceived American entitlement to dollars contributed by U.S. corporations.
The IOC may love American dollars. It does not love Americans. And it has figured out that there are other sources of income out there, particularly Chinese.
The IOC especially does not love Americans now. The USOPC is as politically weak as it has ever been. Susanne Lyons, the USOPC board chair, is not even an IOC member. With that in mind, the IOC would be inclined to listen to the USOPC now — because, why?
Bigger picture:
Sure, let’s get on a global stage and tell the world why they’re wrong. Our moral suasion, for starters:
Our federal government in recent years has overseen the kidnapping of babies and children at the southern border … prosecuted a war of dubious means in the Middle East … and just this month is in the midst of executing a string of prisoners on Death Row.
Do Americans understand the depth of passionate opposition that exists across Europe in particular — the IOC base — to state-sanctioned execution?
Not to mention — the existence of, still — Guantanamo.
And our gun violence.
And the way we have responded, failingly, to the COVID-19 crisis.
The 45th president has withdrawn the United States from climate-related treaties, alienated a host of governments worldwide and seemingly broken every norm associated with presidential conduct. A 2017 meeting between Bach and President Trump in Washington was a disaster.
This is relevant because — why? Because in every country except the United States, the Olympic team is an arm of government, a federal ministry.
Trump, meanwhile, just signed the Rodchenkov Act, which criminalizes doping under certain circumstances. The IOC hates this law. So does the World Anti-Doping Agency. So do the Russians. Like it or not, the Russians continue to carry considerable sway within the Olympic scene.
A year ago, the Olympic Manifesto — written in 1892 by the founder of the modern Games, Pierre de Coubertin — was sold at auction in New York City for $8.8 million. A few weeks later, when the 14-page manuscript was donated to the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, the buyer was revealed — the president of the International Fencing Federation, Alisher Usmanov, the Russian billionaire.
Bach is himself an Olympic gold medalist, 1976, in fencing.
People, pay attention.
Into all this flutter the USOPC love notes.
Alain Lunzenfichter is a French journalist of many years with close ties to the IOC. If the IOC has been scrupulously silent, feel free to read in this tweet from LuLu, as he is well known within Olympic circles, about how the USOPC move is likely to be received.
In two words: not well.
The translation:
“The American Olympic Committee has not understood that it is but one of 206 countries the IOC invites to the Olympic Games. Even if it is important, it must respect the rules that will be issued by the latter and not impose its law on the other 205 countries. The IOC will have the last word.”