What Exactly Will Vancouver Show The World At the 2010 Olympics?
The opening ceremony is a fortnight away, but the Five Ring Circus is pretty much upon us now. The streets are already looking fuller, line-ups for groceries are twice as long as normal, and numerous roads and cycleways have been shut down. The MSM is providing a steady stream of Olympic trivia and the 2010 advertisements are everywhere to jolly us all along and divert our attention from the growing police presence.
Although there's very little overt negativity in the MSM, there's a hollow ring to the triumphalism of Vancouver 2010's ringleaders - VANOC, Premier Gordon Campbell, et al - that we have had to endure these last few years.
Thus far, the most negative MSM coverage of the Olympics has been largely weather related. Vancouver is unseasonably warm right now, with temperatures decidedly Springlike - trees are blossoming and green shoots popping out of the soil everywhere.
Lack of snow on local mountains meant Olympic organisers had to helicopter snow in.
Even if local media outlets are finding that $900 million price tag for the 2010 Olympic security operation difficult to stomach, nobody wants to rain on the parade. Actually, nobody wants to shoot himself in the foot. Most local media outlets are stakeholders in the Olympic bonanza. The cash tills are already ringing.
Olympic protestors are left mostly venting their fury out in webland.
It appears, though, some foreign journalists have not read the script they were given. Writing in the UK-based Observer/Guardian on Sunday, Douglas Haddow sees Vancouver's Olympics head for disaster.
Tapping into the disgust many here now feel about the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and its "manic mix of hype and gloom" Haddow writes:
"For those who have been planning their resistance since 2003, Vancouver is about to become the world's premier political stage. It will be the best chance yet for the Olympics to be derailed and exposed as what they are: a corrupt relic of the 20th century that does little more than gut city coffers and line the pockets of developers and investors."
Let's hope the world's media ask Vancouverites what they think and don't just wait for the bricks to fly.