Politique Internationale/Olympic Bosh
Taki
ual students, artists who are not pitching scripts at Universal, schoolteachers genuinely inspired by The Magic Flute who never even go near a tax-sheltered offering. Those people are...
...Sadly, it is now a debased culture that can only breed anti-Americanism and antiWestern propaganda as an excuse for its self-inflicted disasters...
...After the amateur games of Los Angeles, America should take the lead and call a halt...
...But the government had changed by then and he was given neither...
...He allows Qaddafi's hitmen to run wild in the Greek capital, and never misses a chance to condemn America and Israel for the world's ills...
...One can only shudder at the thought of how Greek politicians would behave during a Greece-hosted Olympic Games, with 600 million people around the world looking on via the idiot box...
...They've managed it for 800 years...
...Only the most naive don't know that the present Olympic spirit involves nothing more than cheating by the Iron Curtain camp for propaganda purposes...
...It has become a polluted, corrupt, and incompetent country that would use the games only to fatten its filthy pockets...
...Time and agai.n Greek politicians have broken the law of the land by either changing the constitution altogether-Karamanlis alone has done it twice in his lifetime--or by ordering the judiciary--which is appointed by the pols--to declare existing laws null and void...
...When "democracy" was restored, teams once favored by the colonels were punished in the same manner by the "democrats...
...Take what's happened to Greek football, or soccer to be more precise...
...Four years ago, two Israeli golfers entered an international competition in Athens, but were refused entry when an Arab embassy complained...
...But 1 would bet my bottom devalued drachma that the wise Swiss would not accept the games...
...And when a Greek female javelin thrower won a gold medal, the Greek minister of sport pushed aside the official who was supposed to award her the medal and dashed onto the field to do it himself...
...It is not the Greek character that is at fault...
...Take the case of Greece's greatest wrestler, Petros Galactopoulos, a silver medalist in Munich and a bronze one in Montreal, both medals won in Greco-Roman wrestling, a sport that has not changed at all since its inception 3,000 years ago...
...Now the league is semipro, yet the government interferes openly, and at times, blatantly, as when two years ago it penalized an Athenian team four points in order to allow a Pireaus team to win the championship...
...If not hustling and struggling to make, take, and display what they have taken and made, they are not really plugged into the guiding genius of the city...
...The fact that Qaddafi has failed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars owed to Greek engineering companies that have fulfilled contracts in Libya does not seem to worry Papandreou...
...When Karamanlis came to power his state salary was revoked and he became a nonperson...
...Nor should they forget that the original games were halted in 330 B.C...
...If the answer is yes, I suggest we might as well trust the Soviets and disarm unilaterally right now...
...Traditionally, Greek governments have lost little time in making their presence felt within Western groupings...
...The last person of diplomatic status to be thrown out of Greece was, yes, you guessed it, an American intelligence officer investigating the murder of an American diplomat last Christmas...
...If any further reason is needed to disqualify the birthplace of selective democracy from ever being awarded the Olympic Games it is the propensity of Greek governments to introduce retroactive laws once in power...
...They will be in seventh heaven when Los Angeles gets the Royal Opera of Covent Garden and the Ballet Folklorico de Guadelajara...
...My Taki Theodoracopulos is The American Spectator's European editor...
...Here is a quick list: Under Papandreou Greece refused to associate itself with parts of the NATO communique on Poland (pro-government newspapers have called Solidarity a fascist group and Walesa a CIA agent...
...And speaking of Qaddafi, how can anyone take a country like Greece seriously when it has practically mortgaged its future to the Libyan madman...
...Now if any country deserves the Games permanently, it is Switzerland...
...It will be a magnificent testimony to human persistence and determination, but it will also be an irrelevant edifice, soon covered over by the vines and tendrils of the city that is too busy to pause and admire art, except when that art is about money or fame...
...I remember as long ago as 1973 when a ruling colonel ordered my father's team (Daddy was chairman and provider for a top team in the first division) to lose a match because it was important for a team from northern Greece to win...
...Papandreou, of course, has turned this practice into an art...
...Then there were the European Championships held in Athens in 1982...
...The truth is that while the 400 performances are going on here, the city will be doing what it always does-spewing out mass culture, building itself ever higher and wider, making itself richer and more arrogant, not slowing down even at four in the morning...
...Easy...
...But for the summer of 1984, the sounds people will be listening to will not be opera or ballet, but the usual sounds of making it in the world center of ambition, sounds of cash registers and auto exhausts and applause and deep sighs...
...This is it...
...The Pireaus area has a strong Communist constituency, and a football victory diffused a politically dangerous all-out strike...
...Again, this is a great city, but it is all about motion, and not at all about contemplation...
...Civilized people and countries should not take part...
...The Greeks refused to agree to a Common Market condemnation of Libya's intervention in Chad, and held up agreement on the participation of Britain, France, Italy, and the Netherlands in the peacekeeping forces for the Sinai...
...when he complained a statue erected in his honor was torn down...
...Thus, they will lavish attention and praise on the Olympic Arts Festival, but their feelings will not in any meaningful way represent the real feelings of this city...
...because o f . . . corruption...
...The authorities simply tore up their visas and threw them out...
...The football ruling body is appointed by none other than the Prime Minister and answers only to him...
...Until recently the First Division League was supposedly amateur, but players negotiated contracts for enormous salaries with government approval...
...To be fair to the greatest Americahater since the Ayatoilet, it wasn't Andreas Papandreou who started the rot...
...Such is the politicization of all walks of life in Greece, that it would take volumes to chronicle all the times the state has interfered in the field of sport...
...Again one shudders at the thought of thousands of Americans held hostage to Arab mobs during an Olympiad in Greece...
...Let the Soviets and their clients go to Greece if they wish...
...As a wise man said, there comes a time to call a halt...
...The fact that Greeks outside Greece are among the world's most honest, brave, law abiding, and successful people speaks for itself...
...In view of the fact that even a 12-and-under marbles tournament in Greece is likely to be politically interfered with, the Greek president's call gave me my biggest laugh since Gary Hartpenny tried to hire that Jackie Onassis look-alike to pose as his wife...
...The Olympic Arts Festival will be like that opera house that Fitzcarraldo carried up the Amazon to the heart of the Brazilian jungle...
...POLITIQ UE INTERNATIONALE OLYMPIC BOSH by T a k i One of the funniest things I've heard since Gary Hartpenny was the renewed call by Constantine Karamanlis for the Olympic Games to be held permanently in Greece in order to rid them of political interference and commercialization...
...Needless to say, it isn't just football that is rotten to the core in Greek sport...
...It is the Greek nemesis of bad leadership...
...They love culture for its own sake...
...Those people are genuinely interested in music, art, drama, and sculpture...
...I say we don't give yet another platform to the totalitarians of this world to advertise the prowess of their robots...
...A similar thing happened to Christos Papanicolaou, a pole vaulter who set a world record at the 1969 European Championships--in Athens...
...Greece held up a letter welcoming Spain's application to become a member of NATO THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1984 31 (this before the socialists had come to power in Spain...
...father quit in disgust...
...But these people, while often fine individuals and good friends, are almost completely marginal to what the city is about...
...I personally think this makes us a poorer city, and maybe some day it will change...
...Not by a long shot...
...Thank god, Greek medals are as rare as pardons in Teheran, otherwise Greek pols would be making even worse fools of themselves...
...Is the West so naive as to believe that the Greeks will not pull an Ayatoilet once the Olympic Games belong to Greece forever...
...I'll limit myself to two further examples...
...These were advertised as the "socialist" games (Papandreou having just come into power), and one of his ministers insisted on making a political speech during the opening ceremonies while hapless Olympic committee officials just stared straight ahead, powerless to interfere...
...The Swiss have managed through their armed neutrality to live up to what is supposed to be the Olympic spirit...
...Last, but certainly not least, Greece was the only European country to refuse to condemn t h e . . , shooting down of the defenseless KAL 007 by the Soviet air force (again, under governmental prodding, pro-government newspapers accused the Koreans of spying and the United States of provoking the Soviets...
...They already have the U.N...
...Greece has always been a country obsessed by real and imaginary threats to its security, a people divided by the yellowest press in the world and betrayed by the most venal political leadership this side of Palermo...
...Upon his retirement Galactopoulos asked the ruling sports body to deliver on what had been promised him, i.e., a good pension and a lucrative coaching job...
...32 THE AMt:.RICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1984...
Vol. 17 • July 1984 • No. 7
