Life, Death and the Olympics
A friend of mine writhes in pain. A tumor the size of a small medal has challenged his life. And only an Olympian effort will defeat it.
As he lies in bed battling the morphine-defying pain, it’s as if he gains strength from the images from Beijing displayed on the screen above his hospital bed. At this moment, it’s the rowers. Stroke, stroke, stroke. Like my friend really cares. He doesn’t. But with one eye on the Olympics, he doesn’t give up. He tries to watch until the pain is too much. And then it doesn’t matter who wins, or where they’re from. He shuts his eyes in anguish.
It’s not really about the games, after all. They’re just the backdrop to crises big and small.
That’s how I’m taking in this orgy of Olympic spirit – with a little more perspective than normal.
An amok start
Darfur? Tibet? Are they in beach volleyball competition like Russia and Georgia? There is just too much going on in the world to take the games that seriously. Still, there’s no boycott from me. I was one of the more than 35 million Americans tuned to that darn parade of nations. Whose amok idea was it to base the order of appearance on the number of Chinese characters and not the alphabet?
As if that wasn’t amok enough, there was a real amok situation on the second day of these games so desperately wanting to be “the feel-good Olympics” of the new century. Enter Tang Yongming, a 47-year-old who attacked Todd and Barbara Bachman, two American volleyball boosters from Minnesota, at the ancient Drum Tower. Todd Bachman was killed in the knife attack, and then Tang, in true amok fashion, dove to his own death.
How shall we judge Tang? In my extensive reading on the murderous frenzy that is called amok, Tang appears to be a classic case. Pent-up rage, a random knife attack. A suicide. It’s all there.
The New York Times reported Tang to be an argumentative, disgruntled sort. “He grumbled a great deal, very cynical,” a former colleague told the paper. “He had an unyielding mouth.”
Crouching Tiger, Unyielding Mouth? Tang was a cog that never quite fit in the big wheel that is China. But he never squeaked loud enough either. The Times report lists his spiraling vitae: He was a metal presser in a Hanzhou meter factory for more than two decades. When a private company took over the plant, Tang lost his job and was demoted to security guard. Soon after his wife divorced him. Tang sold his house and lived in a rented room with no furniture. He owned one shirt and a single pair of pants. He had no job and slept most of his days away. Police say last week Tang announced to his 21-year-old son that he was leaving rural Hengiie and not returning until he found success.
The internet is full of comments that Tang has shamed China and the Games. But like any amok, it was just a cry for help. His brazen act highlights the glaring need for mental health services for those left behind. They are the ones who find themselves on the margins of the profound changes in the new China – prosperous, strong and exceedingly capitalistic. If you’re not one of the fortunate, the image of 21st-century China must seem like an incredible contradiction, perhaps enough to drive a misplaced cog into a suicidal frenzy.
But it doesn’t quite put the Olympics in its place. That would take a real invasion of a sovereign nation.
Georgia on my mind
Most people have been inured to Iraq and Afghanistan by now. So it’s easy to put those conflicts aside during the synchronized diving events. But the brazen timing of the Russians to go into Georgia while the two countries compete in beach volleyball? That’s just way too odd. On top of that, add Bush and Putin, both at the games, and doesn’t that really position the Olympics as Nero’s fiddle?
Make no mistake, given the oil and geo-political ramifications, this conflict threatens to revive a GOP foreign policy staple: the Cold War.
Cynics are also suggesting it’s an orchestrated “October Surprise” in August, designed to wreak havoc on the presidential race. Let’s see if Condi Rice goes to Georgia and hints that it would be okay for that sovereign nation to attack tiny South Ossetia, which would prompt an overreaction from Russia, thus creating some real drama abroad and in the U.S. It would give John McCain a chance to look like a tough no-nonsense world leader, but all appearances suggest it will make him look like the second coming of G.W. Bush. And does the U.S. or the world really need that?
Of course, you may have missed it all, especially if you thought that the Georgia beach volleyballers in post-match hugs with Russian beach volleyballers had any real meaning.
Don’t let the Olympic spirit get in the way of the stuff that really matters. Just ask my friend whose next breath may soon be as precious as any Olympic gold.
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E-mail: emil@amok.com
Updates on the blog at
Emil:
Good show.
Well, most of it anyway.
Sorry about your friend, but Rodel today has an even deeper question going back to ’81 about a good guy the bad ones couldn’t stomach. And all those deaths and disappearances following. Just like JFK.
As for show-and-tell time in Beijing, Spaniards notwithstanding, the good news is that aside from your amok citation, NO ONE else is killing, or even indulging in minor mayhem. Only taunts and nyah-nyahs.
Plus, of course, that correspondent.
Frank
P.S.: I think, also here, that the ideograms and pictographs long predated the “alphabet,” and why
“English” only anywhere other than Bobby Jindal’s Louisiana?
Georgia must be very upset that they were led to believe the US would back them all the way to NATO and EU.
They attacked South Ossetia where the local residents are not Georgians but rather Ossetians who speak ancient Persian in common with North Ossetia which is part of Russia. Their minor “racial cleansing” action got Moscow mad, what happened later we all read about.
Also we all remember that Josef Stalin was a native son
of Georgia. He killed millions of Russians (and others) during his reign of terror behind the “Iron Curtain” as the dictator of now defunct USSR.