The Unconscionable Legacy of the 2016 Olympic Games — #ThirdWorldGames

At Vice Sports, "THE RIO GAMES WERE AN UNJUSTIFIABLE HUMAN DISASTER, AND SO ARE THE OLYMPICS." (Hat Tip: Mina Kimes.)

I don't think I watched any more after Tuesday night. Once most of the marquee track events were done, I tuned out. Then of course you had the news of that idiot lyin' Ryan Lochte. I hope he's banned from the sport. He only took one gold anyway, and that was on a team relay. He's washed up, in more ways than one.

And as you recall, my hashtag's been #ThirdWorldGames, and for good reason.

In any case, from the article:

More than anything else, what surprised me during my first Olympics was the sheer scale of the bubble the IOC has made for itself. After arriving at the airport, members and assorted apparatchiks were ushered into private cars, ferried along exclusive highway lanes—look out the window, and there were Rio 2016-branded walls to mask the favelas—and dropped off at their exclusive hotels ringed by security, so only those with credentials could enter. They then took the same private cars to all of their events. Some even got motorcades. Once they got to the various sports venues, they went in the Olympic Family entrances, passed through the Olympic Family security lines, mingled in the Olympic Family club lounges, and watched athletes compete from the Olympic Family seats. When they were hungry, they surely put their $900 per diems to use at the city's most exclusive restaurants and bars, never risking having to interact with anyone who wasn't wealthy. Except, perhaps, for the people serving them.

Yes, the Olympic Bubble is so all-encompassing that the IOC has convinced itself that it doesn't exist. "These games have not been organized in a bubble," IOC President Thomas Bach told reporters on Saturday as he made other demonstrably false claims, such as the Games not using any public money and Brazilians being "united behind these Olympic Games" despite the fact that half of them weren't. Bach ended his press conference by no-commenting almost every question, but adding that if the Olympics can happen in Rio, they can happen anywhere.

Putting aside Bach's sportocrat snobbery, there is a critical lesson here. The Olympic Bubble's comprehensiveness illustrates just how little the IOC is concerned with anyone but themselves—and how blithely, even happily indifferent the entire Olympic "movement" is to the waste and corruption it fosters, and the human wreckage it leaves in its wake...

Rather than bring development and prosperity, the games will increase economic inequality and social division.

More at that top link.