It won't make much difference my saying this.

[fpb]

But I might as well. The Olympics have some kind of quarter-century murderous tyranny drive. 1936, Berlin. 1968, Mexico City (with hundreds of students slaughtered on the main square for extra entertainment). 1980, Moscow. 2008, Beijing. And the Seoul Olympics were awarded before the military tyranny in South Korea was overthrown. And the 1972 Munich Olympics were stained by the blood of Jewish athletes and should have been abandoned. I was ten at the time and I was furious that they continued, and I haven't changed my mind since; only I did not realize then that this massacre of Jews took place within a few miles of Dachau concentration camp. The fact alone that Jews were once again butchered in Germany ought to have raised ugly echoes everywhere; the fact that this was only one Olympic after the Massacre Olympics of Mexico City made it even worse. But I am afraid that the Olympic movement and shame are two altogether separate and alien concepts.

I love sports. And other games have had their shameful moments - the World Cup was held in Fascist Italy in 1934, in Mexico City in 1970 two years after the Massacre Olympics, and in Jorge "20,000 desaparecidos" Videla's Argentina in 1978. But the Olympics seem especially reckless with their supposed moral authority.