Protesting a particular cause or issue during the torch carrying back in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s was a big deal. Media coverage was often best acquired by the newspaper or your evening news, and the media had not settled on but a few things that could fill up a news cycle. So whenever the Olympics were fast approaching, that was what was going to be talked about in the months leading up to it, and when there was adamant protest to go along with it, that protest now had the air time and a voice to take issue with whatever cause they were protesting for or against.

But in today’s information technology era, where news gets fed to us through our phones, iPods, satellite radio’s and Internet RSS feeds, the news cycle has plenty to talk about all day and everyday. Thus, in today’s world, the months leading up to the Olympics aren’t filled with an overbearing amount of Olympic coverage. Therefore, when people decide to protest the carrying of torch, their platforms aren’t as big as they used to be, and their voices, well for lack of a better term, are more or less cut at the throat.

The only thing that makes the news cycle when people protest the Olympic torch is not the issue or cause from which the protestors are protesting, but it is the actual protest itself. Sure, when I was watching the news, on my blackberry, from an RSS feed, that I had set up on the Internet, I heard what their cause was. But the news anchor didn’t go on to discuss the cause in great detail, nor did he turn to any news contributors or commentators for further explanation. Instead, he talked about the demonstrations, the anarchy of it all, and future outrageous acts of protest to come.

Let’s face it, if there is a cause that people are going to hear about and get behind, the media is already going to be talking about it, without centering the issue around the torch bearing.

Look people, the Olympics of today are just about sports and marketing. It is not the grand, unifying, symbolic event that it once was. Not since drugs, cheating, and mass corporate marketing became heavily involved with the Olympics has this event been the place to raise issues. So take your signs and attack of the torch elsewhere. Protesting the Olympics will not get your cause on the map anymore than it already has. It will be a drop in the news cycle, and the second the Olympics are over, nobody will mention it if the only platform you have taken is attacking some innocent torchbearer.

Besides, is your cause so important that is only worth taking up once every 4 years? If it is, then that in itself should speak volumes about your own loyalty to your own cause.

4/09/2008 11:12:00 AM
Categories: antiquated behavior, olympics. Author: Uzo Ometu

Granted, I understand that Bear Sterns is the fifth largest investment bank in the nation, and they are a tremendous asset to our economy, but the bail out of that company is quite contradictory to what I have heard from this administration time and time again.

Correct me if I am wrong, but all I ever hear from the government is how imperative it is that we allow the economy to run its course (where have we heard that one before…?). The President, Greenspan, and to some extent present Fed Chief Ben Bernanke, have been preaching about how private enterprise will lead us out of the recession. That was supposed to be the message behind their stimulus plan and tax reimbursement checks they are sending out, in that the extra $600 is supposed to be used in buying American products and boosting private enterprises.

Yet, that is not the message they are sending out when they help Bear Sterns out of a jam.

In fact, they are sending out the exact opposite message. They are saying that given the extremities of the times and the “slowing economy” that the government will do whatever it can to save the economy from ruin, even if that means (heaven forbid) getting involved in doing something like backing a loan or purchase.

However, that message doesn’t apply to the mom and pop stores that are being gutted, abandoned, bought out and eventually eliminated across this nation. No, if they get in trouble, they can’t even get financing from their local Savings & Loan if their credit has been damaged by their lack of business. Yet now, a company like Bear Sterns, who invested in one of the biggest financial follies of the past quarter century, is getting a pick-me up.

Now I understand that bailing Bear Sterns out was pretty much necessary. And it is not that I am not in favor of bail outs, because in the end it will hopefully save jobs. That said, this particular bail out won’t save the right people. With Bear Sterns essentially selling the clothes off their back for a penny on the dollar, there will naturally be some layoffs on their way, despite the federal government’s involvement.

And that’s where I have the real issue. If taxpayer dollars/paper-money/credit or whatever you want to call it is going to support this transaction, then it should support all of the taxpayers who work at these companies, and not just the shareholders, officers, and board directors who got them in this mess. But that is what’s happening here, because with the $270 million coming to the shareholders of Bear Sterns, they are getting something out of their fledgling investment, and officers will still get to exercise their stock options, all the while workers and the people on Main Street suffer the consequences.

If the Fed wants to bail out companies, I suggest they come up with a new way of doing it, because this isn’t it. JPMorgan, Bear Sterns, and the Fed, each get something out of this, while many of Bear Sterns employees don’t get anything. I don’t know what to suggest (a favorite columnist of mine Paul Krugman does), but I wills offer this. And that is that the government needs to start helping out the taxpayers before it starts helping out the institutions. If the government continues at this extreme macro level instead of trying to fix this problem in the states and communities where the economic troubles can’t be fixed by paper money, then this system of bailing out large institutions will ultimately fail the majority of Americans.