From Yahoo Sports, Friday March 27, 2009:
The International Olympic Committee decided to end the globetrotting torch relay, discontinuing an event that began with the Athens Games in 2004 and was used again by the organizers of the Beijing Games this past August. For future games, the torch will only tour the country where the games are being hosted.
After the debacle that was the Beijing Olympics torch relay, this makes utmost sense. The picture above is from a stop in London on the torch relay’s jaunt last summer. Does that pictures scream Olympic spirit to you? Does the Olympic motto of faster, higher, stronger pop into your mind when looking at that image? Me neither.
Oh boo effing hoo, Maggie. Those pesky protesters really are a pain, aren’t they? They just ruin everything. After all, the Olympics are supposed to be a celebration of the greatness of international peace, unity, brotherhood, and friendly sportsmanship. We’re supposed to put aside our differences and play curling with some Iranian scumbag who doesn’t want to play because there might be an Israeli on the same ice as he is.
For some reason, that spirit of “faster, higher, stronger” doesn’t enter her mind there. Nope, it’s the torch relay that needs to go.
It doesn’t strike Ms. Hendricks as slightly odd that there is no history of torch relay protests for the past twenty plus years. Games in Greece, Australia, the United States, France, Japan, Italy, Norway, or Spain. Why is that? There’s a reason, Ms. Hendricks, that the torch relay was so heavily protested for the Beijing games. It’s because China is a piece of garbage country that treats its people horribly and crushes dissent with jails and secret police.
It’s because you and your cohorts in the media put on the “happy face” and pretended everything in China was just fine and that everything bad that goes on there just wasn’t going on anymore. You blindly parroted government talking points and never showed one second of the protests once you were inside the country because, God forbid, they might revoke your media credentials and keep you from covering the magnificent shot put.
The reason there were protests of the torch relays was because that was the only protesting the stupid chickenshit media had the balls to show because they could do it from outside the borders of China.
There were protests, Ms. Hendricks, because people like you weren’t doing your damn job. But don’t worry; we’ll tidy those up right quick for you and won’t inconvenience you with the truth anymore.
Just for the fun of it, here’s what I had to say on the subject of the Olympics being in China way back on August 8th of last year.
See, Maggie? Even if you don’t do your job, someone will clean up behind you and do it for you.