There’s no coverage because the Chinese-American community is keeping their dissent in-house. There is quite a split in the San Francisco Chinatown between the newcomers who toe the PRC party line, and the old-timers, who hail mostly from Hong Kong or elsewhere in Canton. This plays out elsewhere in the Chinese-American community, but gets little press play.

The Taiwanese faction has been laughing up their sleeves at every Mainland gaffe, but have not said anything much in our press for a couple of reasons. One is expressed in the saying: 一事無成 yishiwucheng – roughly, “it will accomplish nothing”. The other is that they do feel some pride in a Chinese venue, and they feel that stepping out of line at this point fuels racist nonsense like the crap pulled by Spanish basketball team.

Eric, you’re right, there are many similarities with 1936 – although I certainly hope there’s no impending world war on the horizon. There are certainly enough regional wars. China’s posture, need to present a proud face, and determination to impose their version of reality on the world in the media and to a live audience is definitely reminiscent — good call.

Vince, I do agree on the politicization of the modern Olympics – from the award to the nations participating to the unfolding international backdrop during the games. It must be particularly painful for Russian and Georgian athletes right about now!

On the “our government isn’t spotless” note – can you imagine the TSA complaints that would be generated by a USA-hosted Olympics right about now? Oh. My. Goodness. It would be pretty brutal. We’d probably be denying entrance to teams’ javelins, strip-searching paralympians, and pissing off giant weightlifters.

As much as I would like for our foreign policy to consistently reflect our ideals, there has to be pragmatism, and China is too big and too vital for us to treat like a pariah state. I’d like to think, too, that engagement might eventually pull China into liberalism; that hasn’t worked especially well unless you count the slow shift China has made from being a totalitarian state to merely being an authoritarian one, but that’s probably another debate.

I have to admit: I am not and have never been an Olympics fan, and it always surprises me a little when people appear shocked at the latest round of politicization, corruption, scandal, or whatever. At the risk of invoking Godwin, have the 2008 Summer Olympics been that different from the 1936 Summer Olympics? It seems to me, indeed, that the major difference is that the authoritarian state of 2008 has been less successful in using the Olympics as a ministry than the authoritarians of ’36: notwithstanding China’s attempts to sanitize the coverage, there have still been protests, some world leaders have declined to attend, and there’s unlikely to be a Triumph Of The Will to excite and inspire nationalists at home and sympathizers abroad.

At any rate, it remains a marvel to me that the Olympics have any reputation or regard left to lose. The whole thing has always been a political sideshow and nationalist project, has always been rife with corruption and cheating, has never lived up to its ideals as an institution regardless of all those small moments when an individual athlete shone and sparkled amidst the rubbish with a personal and hard-won moment of achievement. But obviously, I’m in a small minority–perhaps I’m just too focused on the whole forest and should be spending more time on those few spectacular trees that dot the terrain.

Me, I just enjoy seeing Michael Phelps kick the French’s butts.

As for the masks – that was a deliberate slight. The airport is far away from downtown Beijing, and it’s air conditioned, for Pete’s sake. They knew cameras were going to be on them deplaning, so they donned the masks as a protest. Now, putting them on as soon as they got out of the taxi and onto the street in Downtown Beijing – just fine. Wearing them inside an air conditioned building, be it hotel or airport – insulting.

However, I’d like to see all the athletes wearing them on the street, and actually on the field when not competing, to protest the obvious bribery of the IOC by the Chinese, and their blatant lying about future air quality when they were awarded the games.

All the rest I agree with.

I love seeing Chinese protestors, whether it be human rights, environmental concerns, or like you cite here, governmental injustice. They always make me very proud.

A couple of things, however. First, the modern Olympics have always been politicized and always will be. Second, what else do you expect from the Chinese government. Of course, our government’s record ain’t spotless, either. One blog made recommendations about security of laptops, cell phones, and other information if you were going to China for the Olympics. Some people called the author racists – me, I called him realistic.

Finally, while doping is a serious problem, many of the methods used to catch dopers is no better than polygraphs trying to catch liars. Much better tests (and by that I mean ones that have far less false positives) need to be developed.

Anyway, that’s my humble opinion.