If It Ain't Broke...

Even though the city of Chicago did not win its bid to host the 2016 Summer Games (OK, side question...since the winning city, Rio de Janeiro, is south of the equator, isn't it a little hemisphere-centric to describe these as the "summer" games when they will actually be taking place during the host city's winter?), the White House will keep its Olympic office open.

In fact, the administration said, they'd intended from the start to set up a permanent office, officially the White House Office of Olympic, Paralympic and Youth Sport, no matter what the results of the International Olympic Committee's vote on site selection. Uh huh.

Some folks say that the presence of such an office will help the U.S. in the eyes of the IOC, since our lack of any kind of permanent government agency dedicated to sport has been a "deficiency" in our bids thus far.

Maybe if we could find some Tibetan monks to beat up, like the hosts of the 2008 Games did, or a variety of religious and ethnic minorities to harass and eventually murder by the millions, like the hosts of the 1936 (Winter and Summer) Games did, or impose a system of government that led to the deaths of millions of people around the globe, like the hosts of the 1980 Summer Games did, we could improve our record.

Oh, wait. The U.S. has hosted four Summer (1904, 1932, 1984, 1996) and four Winter (1932, 1960, 1980, 2002) games since the modern Olympics began in 1896, three more than the second-place nation, France. So it's a little hard to see what good an official, genuine Guvmint Office will do for sports 'round these parts. "Building goodwill" with the IOC is not necessarily something to shoot for.

OK, I'll open my mind and believe that the idea's potentially a good one. Let's get some people with some knowledge of sports, politics, fund-raising and so on, get them to get their heads together and see what bright ideas they can come up with. What? We've already got some folks hired? Great! What have they been working on so far?

Uh-oh.