5. 1980/1984: Communists and Capitalists trade boycotts

I know I'm beating a joke into the ground, but that quote is such hilaritude it bares cutnpasting again: "...one of the basic principles of the Olympic Games: that politics play no part whatsoever in them."

Ah, politics. What would the Olympics be, really, without politics? And it's not just Cold War countries, everyone was boycotting something at one time or another. China boycotted the games until 1984 because the IOC insisted on recognizing Taiwan as its own country. Switzerland, Spain and the Netherlands sat out the '56 games in Melbourne to protest the Soviet crackdown in Hungary, while Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon stayed home to protest Israel's invasion of the Sinai Peninsula. 26 countries boycotted the '76 Games in Montreal after New Zealand was allowed to compete. What was so wrong about New Zealand? Well, their Rugby team had recently played in South Africa, and there was a worldwide moratorium against any international competition with South Africa. North Korea boycotted the '88 Seoul Olympics because....why? Who knows. North Korea is crazy. Even crazier: Ethiopia, Nicaragua and Cuba joined them, for some reason.

Petty politics, indeed. You have the quote memorized by now.

But politics aren't all bad. They can also be used as a force for good as well. Witness the 28 year ban of South Africa from the Olympics (and all other world class events as well) due to their apartheid regime, embarrassing them towards moderate social change.

Of course, by the 90s things smoothed out, and the Olympics weren't about politics anymore. Instead, they were about economics. Historically, Olympics were never really money-makers. It was the 1984 Los Angeles games that changed all that, as the new IOC President, Juan Antonio Samaranch, was less about the political meddling and stuffy aristocratic pretentiousness, and all about the bling bling. Boy was he ever. This guy would push over his own mother to get a nickel on the street. It was he who repealed the Games' inane law of amateurism, because he had good business sense, and in the world of sports marketing, professionalism brings the dolla bill, y0. 1984 invented the phrase "official soft drink/camera/toilet plunger of the Olympic Games", and without any communist countries around, no one was complaining. Reagan was in the White House, greed was good. Movies were being made about the stock market. It was like one big capitalism circle-jerk. They took what Orwell predicted and then ran laughing in the opposite direction.

This cleaned up a lot of things (nepotistic cliquism being one), but it also created a whole host of new, unfamiliar problems. In particular: bribing, commercialism, commodification of the Olympic ideal, and selling the Games--piecemeal--to the highest bidder. So instead of stuffy IOC functionaries meddling the Games for political purposes, you had stuffy IOC functionaries meddling the Games for financial purposes. This is a lot like switching the flat tire on your car with one of the other wheels, rather than the spare.

But does that mean that politics is gone for good? Ha ha ha. What do you think?