Falling Rocks from Mount Olympus

[e_dog]

As the Olympics are the most politicized of sporting events, so are election campaigns the most sporty that politics gets. the coverage of party conventions is as meaningless and jovial as sportscasters' coverage of rival teams. issueless idenitifications with established groups, violence and struggle packaged as entertainment. of Course, in both instances, the real victors are those backing the participants-competitors: corporations. The real winners of the gold medal counts at Athens were not the United States of America, Russia and Australia but rather, Nike, Speedo, and Addidas. There were more shots of logos or trademarks than there were of national flags. there once was a time when the olympics was a dangerous though cathartic symbolic laying out of the Cold War between the American and Soviet imperial nations. now, it is just a spectacle of corporate logos fighting it out. Will the team wearing a blue Nike uniform win the volleyball match or will the team wearing a yellow Nike uniform win the match? I mean, even so-called comunist Cuba had prominent displayed trademarks of capitalists on their baseball uniforms. The greatest of all though was some archival footage of some gynastics competition (not the Olympics itself) in which the USA team is wearing a gynamstic's uniform with Chevron across the chest, thereby giving up even the pretense that the fact that the companies like Nike make the uniform justifies putting there advertising logo on the uniform parallel to the national flag. Pretty soon they won't even raise the flags and sing the national anthems but rather raise corporate banners and air advertising jingles. Just Do It!

[preston]

Corporate politics aside ... I was just glad we made it through without any major incidents.

I guess the bad guys decided it wasn't in their best interest to blow anything up.

`

[Lightning Rod]

e_dog

I think you have a very accurate focus on where the power lies.
when Exxon or Halliburton gets a cold, the US governmetn sneezes