Smog? Or Fog?
We posted a blog entry last week about the impending Summer Olympics (the Opening Ceremony is actually scheduled for today, August 8th, fyi) and German athletes outfitted with t-shirts designed to spotlight China’s woeful record on human rights (and by extension, its uneasy relationship with Tibet). A secondary controversy, however, about the quality of Beijing’s notoriously polluted air has been bubbling up in the background for the last 8-to-12 months — as detailed by The New York Times in this informative piece — and it now threatens to push all other issues, including one of government-imposed media censorship, to the backburner.
Upon their arrival in China this week, four members of the U.S. track cycling team drew intense media scrutiny with their curious decision to wear specially designed, United State Olympic Committee-approved masks after they deplaned and in the airport. (More details can be found here, but I’ve posted pics of the aforementioned face filters below.) As you might imagine, representatives of the host country and the Olympic establishment were less than pleased with the spectacle, though official response was somewhat muted, if not outright dismissive.
One official explained away the appearance of smog as yeah, you guessed it, simple fog stemming from the region’s severe humidity. Intense backroom diplomacy between Chinese officials and members of the U.S. delegation eventually yielded a face-saving compromise as the athletes in question quickly backpedaled (pun most certainly intended) away from their actions with a formal apology.
What’s ironic, and what most people are forgetting, is that this is hardly a unique or novel situation. In 1984, when Los Angeles played host to the Summer Games, similar concerns about smog and its effect on performance arose, and in great American fashion, and iconic t-shirt making light of the issue was born.
Not only that, this fine shirt was worn in not one, but two ’80s cult flicks produced in the wake of those games: 1984’s Repo Man and 1985’s Real Genius. We sell this very shirt here at the site (a shameless plug, I admit), which you may or may not know about.
Inform us, dear readers? What should we make of this controversy? Do you even care? And, more importantly, should we remake the tee (as one customer has suggested in a spot-on e-mail) to reflect these new times? Would you buy one if we donated a portion of the proceeds to an organization like Amnesty International?
EPILOGUE: More than 3 weeks after the Olympics concluded, the U.S.O.C. has e-mailed an official apology to the (somewhat understandably miffed) athletes in question.
