O-lim-picks

Christopher ("Christ-bearer"! Ha!) Hitchens may be an intolerable blowhard, but he happens to have some interesting thoughts on the Olympics (which, I understand, are going on now).

Have you ever had a discussion about higher education that wasn't polluted with babble about the college team and the amazingly lavish on-campus facilities for the cult of athletic warfare? Noticed how the sign of a bad high school getting toward its Columbine moment is that the jocks are in the saddle? Worried when retired generals appear on the screen and talk stupidly about "touchdowns" in Afghanistan? By a sort of Gresham's law, the emphasis on sports has a steadily reducing effect on the lowest common denominator, in its own field and in every other one that allows itself to be infected by it.

As usual, Hitchens has overstated his case in his rush to be "controversial", but there's something to be said about the sports-mania that afflicts our society. It is certainly obvious that international sports have very little, if anything, to do with promoting goodwill among nations. Bread and circuses, I say. Bread and circuses.