Lyons:
Olympics negativity still ringing
A week after Chicago’s failed bid for the 2016 Olympics, I’ve engaged in few passionate debates in deference to living more than 50 miles from the site of the proposed games.
If asked, I was for the games. If nothing else, it would have been something to watch the city of my birth be featured on a global stage.
Maybe we could have even taken the kids to an event. Tough tickets to get. The boy likes to whack me with a foam sword, so with seven years of rigorous effort, maybe he could have qualified for fencing and scored us freebies.
It was understandable that some Chicagoans, including some of my own friends, took a negative view. The games would have presented a large inconvenience for them and possibly a boondoggle. But I never understood the objections from people in farther suburbs such as McHenry County.
What was the concern here? Was there fear that the New Zealand swim team would take over the public pool at Knox Park? Or that an errant javelin would catch the front tire of your Ford Explorer on the way to Costco?
This is a great place to raise a family, but you wonder whether we suburbanites want much other than landscaping, attached garages, Tivo and an unencumbered trip to the Jewel parking lot.
Just because we’ve settled somewhere to raise kids shouldn’t mean that the highlight of our lives is quality time with Wii in the rec room, should it?
Even more puzzling was the local reaction that the Olympics Committee’s concerns over Chicago’s violence and corruption affected the bid. Some perspective, please. Rio De Janeiro – which everyone I’ve met who has been there says is an amazing place – is ranked consistently one of the most dangerous cities in the world with about 30 murders a week. Kidnapping is considered entrepreneurial there. It makes Chicago look like Door County.
Trashing Chicago became an off-season Olympics event after the bid decision. It’s gotten tiresome. Moscow (in the height of the Cold War) and Beijing were selected as Olympics sites. Would you really take Leonid Brezhnev or Hu Jintao over Richie Daley? Those guys did a little worse than let parking pirates tow your car or get city contracts for cronies.
OK, oppressive Communist regimes at the time, but admittedly they are cities with higher international stature.
So how about Salt Lake City or Atlanta? I’ve got no quarrel with Mormons, and the Civil War is long over, but unless you’re catching a connecting flight, are either of these burgs on your bucket list?
So let’s knock off the self-flagellation of Chicago for a while. Unless we’re practicing in case it becomes a Summer Games event in 2020.
• Kevin Lyons is news editor of the Northwest Herald. Reach him at 815-526-4505 or e-mail him at kelyons@nwherald.com.
