Category: China – 2008 Olympics

[click to go to Part I or Part II of this series]

The front page of yesterday’s Taipei Times featured the story of two men in China who were sentenced to 3 1/2 and 5 years in prison for dissent.  Keep their fates in mind while you read about the leniency with which the ancient Greeks handled the original philosophical wild man, Diogenes the Cynic.

From pages 120-121 of Tony Perrottet’s The Naked Olympics:

Some of the greatest intellectuals of ancient life were avid sports fans, comprising a virtual Who’s Who of Western civilization.  According to many scholars, Plato got his nickname during his days as a virile young wrestler at the Isthmian games (from platus, probably meaning "broad-shouldered"; his real name was Aristocles).  The playwright Sophocles, as well as being noted in the ring, was a famous handball player; the [admiral] Themistocles, who defeated the Persians, came to the Games of 476 B.C.; the mathematician Pythagoras may also have been a revered sports coach.  But the Olympics did have their occasional critics.  There had always been a modest but vocal undercurrent of anti-sports feeling among Greek thinkers.  Understandably, in an age when Reason was paramount, some would argue the superiority of the mind over the body, and suggest that the national obsession with athletics was frivolous, even philistine.

The Cynic Diogenes, who traded repartee with Alexander the Great himself, was one of the most outrageous naysayers, and, in the fourth century B.C., he brought his attacks to the sports field itself.  His best-documented occurred at the Corinth games*, when he grabbed a victory wreath from the prize table and put it on his own head, claiming that he was the victor in the contest of life, and that spiritual rather than physical effort was more worthy of rewards.  "Are those pot-bellied bullies good for anything?" he asked a gathering crowd.  "I think athletes should be used as sacrificial victims.  They have less soul than swine.  Who is the truly noble man?  Surely it is the one who confronts life’s hardships, and wrestles with them day and night — not like some goat, for a bit of celery or olive or pine**, but for the sake of happiness and honor throughout his whole life."

Later, when he saw a sprinting champion being carried from the Stadium, Diogenes acidly noted that the rabbit and the antelope were the fastest of animals, but also the most cowardly.  He later ran off with another victory wreath and put it on the head of a horse that had been kicking another horse, proclaiming it the victor in the [no holds-barred  wrestling] contest.  Finally, Diogenes made reference to Hercules, the patron of athletes, who had cleaned the filthy Augean stables as one of the Twelve Labors — then Diogenes squatted on the ground and emptied his bowels, suggesting that the competitors clean it up.

"At this the crowd scattered," we read, "muttering that Diogenes was crazy."

First of all, and let’s just get this out of the way:  Diogenes the Cynic sounds like a world-class a-hole to me.  No pun intended.  I can certainly see why Plato described Diogenes as "Socrates gone mad."  But that’s really besides the point.  What’s interesting is what we DON’T read in this account.  Remember, the Isthmian Games in Corinth was one of the four Sacred Games in classical Greece.  These games were religious festivals first (though the athletics component came a not-too distant second).  Intentional public defecation at a RELIGIOUS FESTIVAL?  Sounds pretty darn sacrilegious to me.  Yet we don’t read about fourth-century crowds calling for him to be beheaded, like the Muslim mob did with the Mohammed teddy bear teacher — in the not-so-distant year of 2007.  We don’t read that he sentenced to 3 1/2 or 5 years in prison, like those two poor bastards in China.  Nor was he sent to some god-forsaken re-education camp on a remote island in the Aegean, either.

In fact, from this account, it’s rather difficult to figure out exactly HOW he was punished — IF he was even punished at all!  He couldn’t have been beaten to a pulp after the first time he grabbed the victory wreath, because we’re told he was able to repeat that stunt a SECOND time.  So, was he detained?  If he was, it couldn’t have been for long.  Because again, he was able to lay his hands on a victory wreath not once, but TWICE.

My own guess is that he was restrained, and maybe tossed out on his ear.  After which, he snuck back in to work more of his mischief.

Like I said, Diogenes the Cynic strikes me as a pretty unlikable showboat.  But the thing that most strikes me here is the tolerant spirit of the organizers of the games.  The organizers could have come down like a ton of bricks on this guy…BUT THEY DIDN’T.  In fact, the Wikipedia entry on Diogenes states that after his death, the Corinthians went ahead and built a MONUMENT in the philosopher’s honor.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s that kind of generosity and magnanimity which makes the Corinthian organizers of the games the real unsung heroes of the story.

[next: PETA in the Age of Pericles!]

* Now strictly speaking, this isn’t an Olympic Games story at all, because it
took place at the Isthmian Games in Corinth.  But the Isthmian Games,
along with the Olympics, WERE one of the four Sacred Games of Greece,
and there’s no reason to believe that the organizers of the ancient Olympics would have treated similar conduct any differently.

** Diogenes makes reference here to the victory wreaths awarded during the Sacred Games.  Wreaths given at the Nemean, Pythian, Isthmian and Olympic Games were composed of celery, laurel, pine and olive, respectively.

[Part I of this series can be found here.]

Picked up The Naked Olympics near Taipei’s Warner Village back in November or December last year, and it was quite a good read.  The writer, Tony Perrottet, vividly describes the ancient games, in all their sacredness and profanity.  On pages 88-89, he tells how non-athletes discovered the Olympics could be the ideal forum for the savvy up-and-coming writer or philosopher:

The first to fully grasp Olympia’s PR potential had been Herodotus, the revered "Father of History" who around 440 B.C. wanted to promote his newly written account of the Persian Wars.   Why go on an epic book tour around Greece, Italy and Asia Minor, he pondered, when one could get the same exposure overnight at Olympia?  As Lucian recounts it, Herodotus waited until all the notables had arrived at the festival — this appears from the sources to have been the afternoon of day one — then, "behaving less like a spectator than an athletic contestant," he went inside the crowded Temple of Zeus and began to read his work aloud.  It was a smash hit.  The audience was mesmerized.  As Lucian relates, "It was not long until he was better known than the Olympic victors.  There was not a man in Greece who hadn’t heard the name of Herodotus, either because they had been at Olympia, or were told about him by returning spectators."

A tradition was begun — appearing at Olympia, preferably on the first day for maximum impact, became the literary "short-cut to fame."  In Herodotus’ audience was a young aspiring wordsmith named Thucydides who, according to legend, was moved to tears, and would later write his majestic history of the Peloponnesian Wars (and naturally debut it at Olympia).  Other writers soon followed suit.  Inspired poets took to the temple steps in snow-white tunics and sang their works while strumming a lyre with an ivory pluck.  Some were hailed with cries of Euge! — "Bravo!"  Others were mocked.  Greek audiences were discerning, and were not distracted by displays of wealth.  The tyrant Dionysius of Sicily had his verse read by professional actors, but it was so bad that the crowd looted his tent…

Whoa!  Tough crowd, tough crowd…

Philosophers quickly seized the potential:  soon every soapbox orator in Greece was converging to add his voice to the chorus.  In an early show of antisports snobbery, Diogenes said that it was his social duty to speak to athletics fans:  "Just as a good doctor rushes to help in places full of the sick, so it was necessary for a wise man to go where idiots proliferate."  His fellow Cynic philosophers, who reviled all the trappings of civilization, became a fixture at the Games.  Antiquity’s hippies, they wore their hair unkempt, dressed in rags, mooched meals, and railed against every Greek sacred cow.  But the heroes of Greek philosophy also put in appearances, and geniuses like Aristotle even had their statues raised at Olympia alongside those of athletes…  [emphasis added throughout]

Kinda sounds like dissent, and TOLERANCE of dissent, weren’t antithetical to the Games – they were an essential part of it!  Something to keep in mind in August of ’08, when Chinese authorities display THEIR understanding of the ancient Olympic spirit by busting heads and arresting harmless folk with placards in Tiananmen Square.

[more on Diogenes in Part III]

I really shouldn’t overgeneralize like that.  One Brit at The Guardian hears the talk, and is anxious that a bad precedent is being set – a precedent that could bite the U.K. when it hosts the Olympics four years from now.  Here’s Peter Preston:

You can write much of the script for London 2012 already: the tube strikes, the cost over-runs, the security computers that won’t work and the Kazakh weightlifters lost in Heathrow Airport’s Terminal Five. Factor fat helpings of familiar chaos. But the real problem for the Olympic games we thought we wanted to host is beginning to emerge from the smog over Beijing. Boycotts, boycotts everywhere, and never a pause to think.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has given in already. She won’t be going to China this summer, like the Polish prime minister and Czech president.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is wandering down the same lightly principled path. Expect more European political defections, plus threatening talk from the US would-be leaders in election year. Darfur began the chat and Tibet has turned it to hubbub; this year will be a time for tender consciences to stay away – and 2012 can’t fail to catch the same virus.

[…]

Cue London 2012. Cue all the other freedom warriors who have seen what attention protest can bring. Don’t think that the tiger won’t be pulled by its tail again. But surely we are different: Everyone loves us, don’t they? Not when Stratford provides such a splendid world stage. Not when mushy precedent is set. Prepare, alas, to be very disappointed.

I can see where he’s coming from.  For causes ranging from Northern Ireland to Scottish independence to, heck, the Iraq War for all I know, professional protesters will see 2012 as their golden opportunity.  And while Preston & myself would probably both agree there’s a time and a place for dissent, I think he completely misses the point with regards to Tibet.  Because for Tibetans, there IS no time or place they’re permitted to protest.  If they’re not to march now, then when?

Let’s be clear here.  The Republican in Northern Ireland is free to argue for his cause with a letter to the editor.  The Scot can agitate for his by starting a blog.  The anti-war protester in London can receive a permit to march almost any time he wants one.

And the native of Tibet?

Well, he’s free, too, in a fashion.  Free to shut his mouth, or be sent to a re-education camp somewhere.  By presenting him with this stark choice in the past, the Chinese government made it more, not less likely that he would stand up now.  Because at any other time, Beijing could have done whatever it wanted with its prisoners, confident in the knowledge that the world would quickly lose interest.

But now, the Olympics are but a few short months ahead.  And the world is watching, and wondering.  Nosy foreign reporters are asking if the accused are all right, and the impertinent fellows are even asking to be allowed to SEE these dastardly splittists.

What’s Beijing gonna do with the detainees now?  Line ’em all up and have ’em all shot?

It’s interesting Preston should bring up the issue of precedent with respect to Olympic protests.  He might be surprised to learn that protests have long been a part of the Games, even in ancient times…

[to be continued]

A great Rex Murphy commentary from the Great White North, via Ezra Levant’s blog.  Wait for the line about Gandhi (from 1:15 to 1:53).

Meanwhile, at the Washington Post, Anne Applebaum discusses some Olympic fallacies:

"The Olympics are a force for good." Not always! The 1936 Olympics, held in Nazi Germany, were an astonishing propaganda coup for Hitler. It’s true that the star performance of Jesse Owens, the black American track-and-field great, did shoot some holes in the Nazi theory of Aryan racial superiority. But Hitler still got what he wanted out of the Games. With the help of American newspapers such as the New York Times, which opined that the Games put Germany "back in the family of nations again," he convinced many Germans, and many foreigners, to accept Nazism as "normal." The Nuremburg laws were in force, German troops had marched into the Rhineland, Dachau was full of prisoners, but the world cheered its athletes in Berlin. As a result, many people, both in and out of Germany, reckoned that everything was just fine and that Hitler could be tolerated a bit longer.

(Hat tip to Instapundit for that last one.)

Saw the protests on CNN last night.  Almost made me wish Taiwan HAD let itself be a part of the torch relay.  Mighta made for one helluva show!

The network also featured the efforts of Tibetans to form their own alternative "Tibetan Olympics."  Kind of a slapdash affair, it looks like.  Nevertheless, if Western governments really want to rebuke Beijing, they might want to forget about the whole boycott thing and instead send a few athletes to the Tibetan Olympics as well.

And if Beijing objects?  Hey, just innocently remind them of their own mantra: international athletics should always be kept non-political…

Response from China over Spielberg’s pullout from the Genocide Games:

"China has been doing a lot toward the resolution of the Darfur issue," said Yuan Bin, director of the Beijing Olympics marketing department. "I want to say the Olympics should be kept nonpolitical."

So, Mr. Yuan, I take it this then means China will be dropping its long-standing opposition to Taiwan competing under its Republic of China flag?

Hmm?

UPDATE (Feb 24/08):  No dogs or Falun Gong members allowed.  From the Feb 23/08 ed of the Taiwan News:

[Delegates at a human rights conference in Taipei] urged the IOC to request that the Chinese Olympic National committee adhere to the fundamental spirit of the Olympic Games and abolish the announced exclusion of Falun Gong practitioners from the 2008 Olympics in a joint statement issued after the two-day international forum.

More on this from Between Heaven and Earth.

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From ABC News:

Steven Spielberg, under pressure from Darfur activists, may quit his post as artistic adviser to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, unless China takes a harder line against Sudan, a representative of the film director told ABC News.

Reading further, I was surprised to see that Spielberg isn’t being paid for his work for China’s ’08 Games.  Not that he needs the money, but still. 

So what we’ve got is a 60 year old mogul, probably at an age where he’s starting to think about his legacy in the industry when he passes on, and he’s getting grief about the Genocide Olympics.  And what’s more, he’s gotta realize that people like Mia Farrow DO have some kind of a point.

I think he quits.  The Chinese aren’t the only ones for whom "Face" is important.

Looking forward to the editorial from Taiwan’s China Post.  The one lambasting Spielberg for mixing politics and sport.  From the same folks who never criticize China for preventing Taiwan’s national anthem from being played during Olympic ceremonies.

Mixing politics and sport?  That’s just WRONG.

Unless of course, it’s China that does it.