Politicolympics

How to Fix Politics and the Olympics

If you want to understand politics in America you should watch the Olympics. Why? The Olympics is the perfect blend of pure, unadulterated desire to achieve excellence and... total whoredom. And doesn't that pretty much describe American politics?

First of all, just like American politics, the Olympics is a T.V. event. If it weren't for all the money you can make by being on T.V. who would work so hard to get there? The pure ones. And if it weren't for the money who would use banned drugs or pressure judges, in other words, cheat, to get there. The whores. Just like politics.

So, I suggest the governing body of the Olympics separate the stuff they do for ratings from the true sports stuff. Have ratings grabbing stuff and sports. Don't ever merge the two.

For example, you could open every winter Olympics with Tanya Harding chasing all the other skaters with a hammer. How cool would that be? Tanya Harding chasing after everyone swinging away, the other skaters doing those triple half soft-cows(?) to kick the hammer out of her hand. A ratings bonanza.

The biathlon, an event which combines cross country skiing and target shooting is a T.V. ratings loser but has it half right. What you want for T.V. is to combine downhill racing and shooting. If you have a downhill racer going 80 miles an hour down an icy hill trying to shoot pie plates off pine trees with an Ouzi, you'll get Super Bowl type ratings.

The next logical step is ski jumping and shooting. Give a guy a loaded shotgun and when he goes flying through the air throw some clay pigeons up and see how many he can hit before landing. Of course, landing without killing yourself gets you into the next round. Thus, the ratings success of reality shows like Survivor becomes joined with the beauty of sport. And with these ratings producing, thus money producing events in the mix, the real sporting events could be covered straight, for what they are, instead of the hype and personality profile ratings boosters tagged onto them that we see now.

How does this apply to politics? For a start we shouldn't corrupt real politicians by putting them on T.V., those from the right/from the left scream-fests. Those are just for ratings and money. Clown or stunt politicians, whose vote doesn't actually count, should go on T.V. and put on their little wrestling match. The politicians with pure unadulterated desires to achieve excellence could then get work done. This assumes that there are any of those politicians left but I'm willing to roll the dice if you are.