Bidness and displeasure
Chicago's citizens need guarantees before they'll back 2016 Olympics
To have the Olympics or not to have them? In a way, the answer is not up to us citizens because the decision will be made by others, people whom we likely will never know, most notably the august members of the International Olympic Committee.
But the Olympics consist of real events and real venues.
And those events take place in real time in real neighborhoods with real consequences for the people in the area, with effects that last into history.
In that regard, whether the 2016 Summer Games are held in Chicago should absolutely be our choice, and our choice alone.
Citizens want them -- they can be held here.
Citizens don't want them -- they cannot.
Unless we certifiably live in the monarchy of Clout and can be ordered to do things by the Clout King and his ministers, then we should be able to choose.
On Thursday, Chicago bid leader Patrick Ryan and his team will make their case in Denver at an event called SportAccord, a meeting of more than 1,500 international sports leaders, with lots of IOC members attending.
Chicago is contending with Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo for the 2016 Games, and the wooing process is akin to parading before a panel in high heels and bikini or brown-nosing a snooty physics professor and his staff.
The bidders lay out their wares -- their infrastructure, sports facilities, summer climate, transportation systems, hotels, workmanship, financing, parks, aesthetic appeal, etc. -- and in turn the IOC folks cluck their tongues, nod, leer, whisper behind cupped hands, raise eyebrows, ask for more.
The Summer and Winter Olympics could easily be held in the same place time after time -- say, Athens and St. Moritz, Switzerland. But that wouldn't be ''fair'' to the rest of the world, which, in its competitive zeal, needs a chance to preen and reinvent the wheel, too.
So the parading for love goes on every two years -- and some new place wins the right to deal with all the future good and bad the Olympics bring.
Right now, according to something called GamesBids.com, Chicago is in last place, having dropped behind the three other contending cities because of turbulence at the top of the U.S. Olympic Committee and because ''Chicago is the only candidate without 100 percent public government guarantees.''
Money. It always comes down to money. Who will pay for the building frenzy? Who will indemnify the shortfalls? Who will profit from the success?
Who runs GamesBids.com? Some guy named Robert Livingstone, who claims independence and might actually have it. As he says on his blog, ''Bids have a major impact on the future of the bid cities, and it is important that everyone be informed and involved.''
True. But do we -- the citizenry of Chicago -- want the Olympics, at any price?
This is the sticking point.
My sense of Chicagoans' feelings about the Olympics is that they're torn and ambivalent -- eager to show off our city and its beauties and to host a global event of extreme importance but wary and worried that the city of scams and corruption as backbone DNA will defraud us somehow.
Mayor Daley's paving of streets near the Washington Park Olympic show-off area sticks in our craw not so much for the smooth roads, but because he and his street boys did it without telling anyone first.
Who is against having nice blacktop under visiting dignitaries' cars (even as our ''regular'' streets decompose into moon craters)?
But a simple note from Daley saying, ''We're fixin' da streets down here 'cause big shots are comin', den we'll get to yers,'' would've gone a long way in helping us believe the 2016 Olympics in Chicago wouldn't be a hog-feeding slopfest of the nastiest kind.
There's another Web site, a local one called nogameschicago.com, and its motto is ''Say NO to the Chicago 2016 Olympics.'' It urges citizens to ''RALLY, SPEAK OUT, PROTEST,'' with the corruption and debt issues being key reasons for the fervor.
There are people who would be against anything, including world peace and free gas.
That is our nature.
But Chicago needs more assurances from its leaders that they will do this one right, if it falls into our laps. You know President Obama, the ultimate Chicago canon, will be rolled out to make the final noise to the IOC at win-it-or-lose-it time on Oct. 2 in Copenhagen, Denmark.
But even a president can be wrong, or blinded by ambition.
Chicagoans should remember that the IOC originally awarded the 1976 Winter Games to Denver, but in 1972 Colorado voters rejected a $5 million bond issue to finance the event.
Denver withdrew, and the IOC gave the 1976 Games to Innsbruck, Austria.
Even in Chicago and its surrounding counties, citizens do have power. We know the 2016 Olympics could be an amazing thing.
But not without transparency and ironclad guarantees.
We live here, after all.