KEY POINTS:
We all know the Olympics have always been politically corrupt. We accept that countries use the Olympics for national vanity and glory. But when it comes around every four years, we fall in love with the spectacle. We just can't help ourselves when our Kiwi athletes are successful - we knowingly kid ourselves that this is a positive reflection on us.
It always bemuses me how we talk about how "we" have won when an athlete who was either born here or has a New Zealand passport wins.
Never mind that many of them train overseas. In fact, most of us have never met or even heard of many of them. When "we" win, the country feels great and we feel proud to be New Zealanders. When "we" lose, somehow it's the fault of the coach or some faceless sports bureaucrat who has messed things up.
But winning Olympics medals is pretty cool, even if in some of the events you'd be hard-pressed to argue that it was for a real sport deserving of Olympic status.
Some suspect sports like Greco wrestling, beach volleyball, kayaking and synchronised swimming are more akin to hobbies. Obviously wheeling and dealing behind the scenes by various sports mandarins has been able to swing deals to include them.
But then it's all politics, isn't it?
There is no doubt the Chinese Government has used the Olympics as a coming-out political debut to the rest of the world. The much-anticipated medal dominance by the host country allowed the Chinese to show that they are taking their rightful place in the world.
The Chinese Communist Party has a lot invested in the Olympics success. But like many totalitarian states, its government is inadvertently being shown up for the fraud that it is.
The Communist party bosses just couldn't let this event happen without wanting to politically control it at a micro-level. But then these control freaks are many of the same people who a few decades ago sent tanks into Tiananmen Square to butcher students agitating for democracy.
Some of these kids are still wallowing forgotten in jail, along with untold others who have displeased their ruling despots.
Clearly these old hacks don't think it's wrong to occupy Tibet and prop up other dictators and murderers around the world. In fact, they seemed genuinely aggrieved and bewildered when demonstrators attacked their torch rallies, in protest at Tibet's occupation and their Government's human rights record.
It's as if the Chinese regime is in a time warp and living in a parallel universe to the rest of us.
How else do you explain how anyone who protests against these injustices in Beijing during the Olympics is carted off and given long prison sentences?
But the complicity of the main international media and world leaders by giving superficial coverage of these atrocities is disturbingly cynical. Let's not allow injustice to get in the way of having a parade, right?
But let's not get too sanctimonious as we aren't immune to this, either. I was sickened when senior New Zealand Olympic administrators intervened to pressure our athletes not to make any political statements while they were in Beijing.
This is the same dishonest mentality that the rugby union perpetuated when we were propping up the racist South African regime last century.
It seems that an unprincipled and self-serving agenda by our sports bosses is still alive and well in our society. When the censorship on our Olympic sportsmen and women was reported in our media there was no public outcry.
It seems that our sports bosses are happy to be generously funded by our taxes, but seem to think that any criticism of injustices by the sporting hosts is too political. Oh really?
We should give full credit to the Beijing Olympics organisers, who have put on a grand event with a superb opening ceremony. But it was spoilt when a young girl with real singing talent stayed hidden while a more photogenic impostor traipsed out to mouth the words for the world to see.
This decision was made by senior members of the Communist party. The thinking behind such a decision is deeply disturbing and goes to the heart of morality and values of these people, to say nothing of the psychological damage to the two young girls and their families.
The computer-generated fireworks isn't quite the expose that some media have portrayed, but again reinforces the clear political vanity and agenda of the political warlords who are clearly using the Olympics to reinforce their hold over their people.
The Chinese people have the right to be proud of themselves but the illegitimacy of their rulers is exposed to the world if we care to notice. Maybe the Olympics' legacy will open the eyes of the Chinese people and there will be genuine change for the better. It's hard to see it happening soon. But then the Olympics is about achieving the impossible.
