In Defense of Rio

Rio is a crime ridden sewer of a metropolis marked by intense local, state, and federal corruption. That’s not the defense part. Nor is the beach with the bare titties, though that’s warmer. The Olympics have always been an assembly of blue-blooded bribery and prostitution, occasionally offset by the competition of athletes from around the world though mostly living full-time in Florida in a series of obscure and largely unpopular sports. Venues have always been shoddily constructed. Olympic Village pipes have always burst. And gay hookups have thrived as they should in all Greek inspired festivals. Rio isn’t the first super shitty Olympics host city. The zika baby heads is a fresh hell, but most of the rest is business as usual.

The real difference is the athletes are no longer broke-ass amateurs from Podunk. They’re by and large full-time professional athletes who live in wall-to-wall Berber McMansions and whose road accommodations far exceed the star rating of the joints you and I filter for on Travelocity. Andrew Bogut is among the athletes expressing displeasure at their Olympic Village habitation. Bogut’s funnier than he is helpful during playoff runs so he created the ironic hashtag, #IOCLuxuryLodging, along with posts mocking the shitty lodgings. Bogut and other athletes will be on social media 24×7 bitching about Rio. Keep it in context. You think Berlin in ’36 was a cakewalk? Granted, the showers probably worked once they slaughtered the Jews. In Munich ’72 they killed the Israeli athletes. There’s a theme here.

Millionaires don’t belong at the Olympics anymore than the Olympics belong as a real thing in the 21st century. Nobody’s boarding steam ships in seersucker suits and straw hats waving to a grateful nation. Put aside all the useless Coke commercial pretense and make this the Women’s Beach Volleyball Championships. The world is watching. Or at least they used to be.