Are you cool as a tool?

Lamenting the protests that lined the Olympic torch's relay path this past April, Paula Radcliffe (the world record holder in the women's marathon) said, "China is an important issue that needed to have the world's attention drawn to it. And in a way the torch relay has given protesters an opportunity to get more of a profile than they would have done otherwise. In that way it's good. But the Olympic torch symbolises much more, way more than just about Beijing. It is about the whole essence of the Olympics. It's about the right to fair play, fair competition, the spirit of the Olympics and what that can overcome. In that way it is wrong to try and grab the torch. Yes, use the thing as a platform to try and get your message across, but don't try to disrupt the path of the torch because it symbolises the power of the Olympic spirit. It is about the ideal of competing fairly, honestly and cleanly. It is about the right that everybody everywhere around the world has to fair competition." (Torch Chaos is ruining games spirit) Her words, believed, appreciated, and agreed to by a good portion of people, is just another flexible, or malleable, ideology. The meaning of the Olympics differs across borders and within the individual, meaning it performs duel tasks when this is the case. A Chinese government official, for example, may buy into the altruistic goals of the Olympics internally, but mesh these and connect these ideas with his own, realpolitik perspective, in which the Olympics are not only a platform to encourage "fair play" but also a platform to publicize China's growing power and presence as a "respectful" nation. Radcliffe, and many other athletes, do acknowledge that the Olympics are used by varying interests, various groups, various agents to promote their own agendas, but they seem to ignore the way in which nation-states exploit these ideals and this stage for their own benefit (and I'm not excluding only China here). In a sense the Olympics is a potlatch on a gigantic scale: its meaning extends far beyond encouraging "fair play" (which in itself is an irony considering that athletes from countries with greater access to healthy and effective training procedures or who have a lengthy history with the sport tend to show wider success in their respective events). It vexes me to see athletes constantly promote these altruistic ideals without thinking about the consequences and the structures, culture, and socio-economic factors that partially frame our existence. I prefer the gruff, unsympathetic competitor who wants to shove his opponents' faces into the mud. Athletes like Paula Radcliffe come across as phoney and false.
So, this leads us to the inevitable questions; should athletes and should we partake in the festivities surrounding the 2008 Beijing Olympics? By watching and by competing individuals are buying into China's self-promotion, just as in 1996 we bought into America's self-promotion, just as at every baseball game we sing god-bless-america and buy into the American ideologies of uniqueness and nationalism. In a sense, we ignore China's human rights record and we become complacent. If the IRC really cared about "human rights", they would have never awarded China the 2008 Olympics in the first place. And if we're all about human rights, we shouldn't be watching, but we rationalize. One may argue that a boycott would accomplish nothing, that it has never accomplished anything in the past. Adhering to such a belief is complacent in itself, it is stagnant; politics is not necessarily a science, human events and human actions are malleable. And to position myself from a scientific perspective, are two or three boycotted Olympics a large enough sample size to really measure "effectiveness"? By partaking in this event we subordinate ourselves to powerful, wideranging discourses and socio-political forces and groups that are potentially damaging to the future existence of humanity. We must critically analyze every nation's aspirations for power (not only China's). What do the Olympics really accomplish? We must open our minds and recognize our roles. Are you cool as a tool?