Gold medal in hype

Life plagues us all with a few enduring curses. Death. Taxes. Rap music. And…the Olympics. Take note, dear Commonwealth, that this time around, the recurring four-year blight of Olympic hype may try to find its way into your wallet.

I’m already getting my earplugs ready in preparation for 2008, when the summer Olympics hit Beijing. And I am on the lookout for anything that tries to use Olympic hype to separate Commonwealth taxpayers from their cash. We’ll hit that point in a moment, but first let’s consider the Olympics themselves.

They annoy me. Big time. The Olympics combine the most obnoxious aspects of mass-marketed sports with witless, small-minded nationalism.

Aren’t there already enough big name sports teams in the world? They are quite capable of sating the legions of slack-jawed television viewers who live vicariously.

And the nationalism part is low-brow. Does any healthy soul really judge a nation by its Olympic performance? Athletics has nothing to do with having a worthy culture. Want to impress me? Cure cancer. Or malaria. Intellect, not javelin throwing, is the hallmark of advanced culture. If a corrupt, Third World hellhole wins a soccer match, it is still a corrupt, Third World hell hole. And if a U.S. muscle man can lift 300 lbs, that’s mighty impressive, but I don’t deserve any credit for his victory just because I’m also an American.

Of course, there’s a lot of money to be made in marketing to the masses, so I don’t deride the pure profit potential of the Olympics. Give the people what they want. New heroes for their cereal boxes. New faces to endorse toothpaste and long distance telephone service. Fine with me.

But there’s a difference between steely-eyed marketing and profiteering on one hand, and puffed up hype on the other hand, and the Olympics have a genius for infecting people with that hype bug. It’s human nature. Some people want to feel like they are a part of something big and glamorous. They’re star struck, and the closer they are to ground zero, the stronger the effect.

Enter the CNMI. It is, of course, the closest U.S. flag to China. We are starting to hear muttering that perhaps the Commonwealth should improve its sporting facilities so it can host U.S. athletes in training.

Gee, who do you think would wind up paying for such things? If it’s the public treasury, I hope that taxpayers have the level sense to fight this one.

The CNMI is so cash-strapped that even basic necessities like electricity and drinking water are matters of pressing concern. Faced with this scarcity of funds, do we really want to squander money on some Olympic scheme because it sounds fun or glamorous?

Says me: If hosting athletes is such a great financial idea, then private investors will be willing to do it. And we all know that won’t happen. I don’t buy any vague, airy notions that it’s all worth it to build “publicity” for the Commonwealth. In the first place, the American consumer isn’t a prime market for CNMI tourism. Secondly, if you’re going to allocate funds for such things, then it’s only a valid endeavor when a qualified cost-benefit analysis is performed, and we all know that won’t happen either. And if someone wants to tell me that it’s all worth it to generate immediate sales for local businesses, then let the businesses fund all the necessary costs. Ha!

I think most people in the Commonwealth have the level sense not to get swept up in the hype that hits at Olympic time.

However, there’s always an element of ego about these things, and maybe the community can be convinced that it deserves its 15 minutes of fame, no matter what the cost. People chasing glamour will invent all sorts of rationale for the pursuit.

If cool heads prevail, though, the Commonwealth taxpayers will be able to fend off any costly schemes that arise from Olympics hype.

(Ed Stephens, Jr. is an economist and columnist for the Saipan Tribune. Ed4Saipan@yahoo.com)