olympic handshaking

Today's the opening day of the Beijing Olympics 2008, in case you've missed that part of the news. Actually, although it's been impossible to miss the fact that the Olympics are being held in China this year, given all the anti-China protests and debates over the last few months, you may have lost excitment for the games themselves.

All the debate about whether China is 'fit' to host the Olympics and activists decrying that having the games in Beijing is against the spirit of the Olympics.... given that the original Olympics were only open to free men who spoke Greek (so no peasants please) and women were barred from even attending, I guess that's a good thing. And don't forget the Berlin Olympics in 1936, were the Olympics revived to forward the 'Aryan' ideal only?

Ok, so perhaps that is an unfair point - but if the spirit of the Olympics is to bring athletes together and promote global unity and fair, friendly, competition, then the violence of some of these protests is the real issue that has spoilt the Beijing Olympics, if anyone feels that they have been defiled. There are many problems, including human rights issues, that need to be addressed by the Chinese government, and pressure from the global community is what is needed. However, before condemning others, perhaps we should examine our own actions and motives first?

Personally, I think that it's too soon for China to host the Olympics - maybe in 8 or even 4 years time I would have felt more comfortable with it. I worry that in both social reform and economic terms they may do China more harm than good. However, I'm pleased to see how well the Chinese government has handled the earthquake disasters this year and even the free-Tibet protests that have made so many headlines. If anyone condemns me for that view, consider how far China has come in the last 20 years, and then attack me. I stand by my opinion.

Today should be a hopeful day though, both for China but also for all the competing athletes! Let's not forget the hard work and training that has gone into the games and instead celebrate that. How better than with an Olympic handshake - an commitment 'to hold ALL our governments to a higher standard of peace, justice and respect for human dignity', one you can also join in with. I'm still proud to call myself Chinese.

Enjoy watching the games! I hope they broadcast the badminton....

Yet another sex scandal

Today's the day of the Mississippi primary but the political spotlight seems to have been usurped by Eliot Spitzer, the governer (for how much longer?) of New York. He's been said to have been hiring prostitutes - at a massive $1000-an-hour - which is all the more ironic given that he investigated prositution cases when he was still New York's attorney general. It's not just a sex scandal case though; it seems likely to escalate into a full-blown investigation of corruption charges and even money laundering.

So how much can we demand to know about the private lives of our politicians? Or indeed, other figures of authority? When I was at high school, the headmaster of one of the schools in our area was nearly forced to resign after copies of Playboy were found in his office drawers. This seemed a little extreme to me, especially since at that particular time a lot of the boys on our school bus were publicly ogling the same sort of magazines. The problem though of course, was that as headmaster as a school, his conduct and moral behaviour would influence not only the reputation of the school, but also all the pupils in that establishment. If a cleaner could find the magazines, what would prevent a student from entering his study and finding them as well? However, knowing a lot of the boys on my bus, they didn't require much 'corruption' in this area and if they did, the older boys were already doing a very good job of it. And to have found the magazines in the headmaster's (normally locked) study, students would have had to be snooping around somewhere they shouldn't have been in the first place.

But this current case, at least in my mind, another matter entirely. Spitzer is refusing to comment on these charges, saying that it is part of his private life, separate from his work and ability to govern. However, Spitzer has based his political reputation on his intentions to stamp out corruption and bring a high standard of ethics to New York politics. This goes down to the issue of trust and whether he can deliver the promises he made to the citizens of New York when he was voted into his post. Using prostitutes is one thing (not that I condone it, but that's a different issue), to cover it up and use state money to arrange these meetings is another.

Not that it's entirely all that surprising to the American political news reporters. It's only been a few years since the governer of New Jersey, James McGreevey, had to step down after having a homosexual affair with his state's head of Homeland Security. Mark Foley had to resign from the House of Representatives in 2006 after he was found to be sending 'sexually explicit' text messages to teenage male interns in the House (which I think is worse). And of course, there was that high-profile case of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky several years ago, when he was still US President. I wonder how long it'll be before that case gets dragged up and used in negative publicity against Hillary Clinton, with this political sex scandal case emerging at such a crucial time in the election process?

Of course, American politicians don't have the monopoly on sex scandals. Plenty of UK MPs have been thrust under the spotlight over the exposure of affairs and the use of prositutes, or indeed, 'rentboys'. The question we have to ask is whether or how much their conduct in their 'private' lives affects their work and standards, and our perspective of them and their suitability as decision-makers for our country. A lot of it depends on the nature of the 'indiscretion', the legality of it (for example, an affair with someone not in the political or business sphere is very different from someone who's a subordinate you've just promoted!), and also how honestly and well the politician deals with it once it comes out under the public eye. In the case of Eliot Spitzer, having built his reputation on the moral high ground, he may find that the higher you rise, the greater the fall.