BECAUSE WE WERE so well behaved during convention week, not getting all lippy and breaking shit when confronted with an unprecedented security crackdown, the city's going to use our behavior as a big selling point in luring the 2012 Olympics here.
Despite all the complaints and all the inconveniences, despite the economic costs, despite the clear message that the people of New York did not want the convention in town, the city shoved it down our throats anyway. And now they're determined to shove another televised corporate orgy 10 times as large and 10 times worse down our throats before you can say "Re-elect Giuliani/Frist in 2012."
"We will use the Republican convention as a case study to illustrate New York's capacity to host big events," said deputy mayor Dan Doctoroff, regarding his efforts to sway the Olympic committee.
In short, the city is using the GOP convention as a case study in how easily we can be shoved around. "Sure, they'll bitch and moan about everything, but in the end they'll do what we tell 'em, and they'll get used to it. They're like sheep, these people."
Some might say that the Olympics, should they come here, are still eight years away, so what's the point of worrying about them now? Well, the mayor's office is worrying about them now, and that's what concerns us. These things take years to put together, and planning for 2012 needs to be snipped in the bud.
The Olympics never bring about the kind of economic boom they promise, as the last few host cities can attest. (And is anybody ever going to trust estimates from the mayor's office again?) Security measures would be much, much worse than during the RNC, because the general public would be involved and not just party delegates. Instead of a singular, localized event space to keep an eye on, there would be half a dozen spread all over town. Traffic would be a nightmare, not just during the games, but for years prior to their arrival as the infrastructure gets built. Instead of bringing in a few thousand delegates, protestors and journalists, you're talking about many hundreds of thousands of extra bodies. The worst of it would drag on for weeks if not months. Olympic hype, already suffocating the event no matter where it occurs, would reach a truly unbearable pitch. And speaking of the ancient Greeks, the target-rich Olympics would put dangerous strains on the men and women in charge of Operation Atlas, whose expensive wheels would no doubt be put in motion.
So what's the point of squeezing the Olympics onto our geographically tiny, overcrowded city? Prestige? We've already got prestige. We don't need to prove anything to anybody. Apart from that, what is there, really? New badminton courts on the waterfront? Higher billboard ad rates? Who exactly would benefit from this? Not you, and not us.
We realize that everyone is probably protested out, but the time to get another half-million people in the streets to stop this thing is now, before it's too late.
