The Corporate Olympics

I’ve never been much of a sports fan, but I’ve always taken at least a passing interest in the Olympic Games. I’m already sick and tired of the upcoming London Olympics, however. Whether it’s a story of LOCOG pettiness, such as making a butcher remove a display of sausages arranged in the form of the Olympic rings, or the sponsorship of the Paralympics by the scourge of disabled people, Atos, these games seem to be all about corporate interests, and no business of the hoi polloi, in sharp contrast to the first Olympic games I remember seeing, Mexico ’68.

Stories are even emerging of people being evicted from their rented homes, to make way for visitors who will pay exorbitant rents. While this isn’t the fault of LOCOG, it fits well with what appears to be the New Olympic Ethos – cash in wherever you can.

I expect I’ll be watching a lot of DVDs this summer, possibly while eating Burger King burgers, washed down with Pepsi cola.

Related articles

• Twitter suspends account for using London 2012 Olympics logo (guardian.co.uk)
• Space Hijackers create Official Protesters programme for the London 2012 Olympics (boingboing.net)
• Twitter suspends Olympics protestors’ account (telegraph.co.uk)
• Olympic protesters suspended from Twitter over trademark violation (wired.co.uk)
• Behold the London Olympics’ Creepy ‘Brand Exclusion Zone’ [Olympics] (gawker.com)
• Olympic organisers shut down “Space hijackers” protest Twitter account (indexoncensorship.org)
• Hotel prices remain high for the Olympics, despite LOCOG’s release of 120,000 hotel rooms (onefinestay.com)

 

(The following picture will probably confuse most people, unless you’re in a certain age range!)