Olympic Advertising

I don't think I've even been more interested in an Olympics than I am in this one and now I have mixed feelings about it. This article started my displeasure: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/jan/31/vancouver-winter-olympics-police.

It seems that in order to get the Olympics in Vancouver they claimed it would cost about 660 million and they would make about 10 billion, seems laughable to me but whatever I've never been someone with economic insight. Now they say it's going to cost 6 billion, that's a big difference, how does anyone make that kind of mistake? By hey it's forgivable, doesn't the Olympics put every city into massive debt, maybe only in Canada where we here in Montreal paid off the '76 games a few months ago. That's literally my life time, so far anyway.

This is what really burns me. The sponsors are dominating everything, American companies that are using Canadian soil and Canadians to peddle their wares. We're currently in a Capitalist state so that's fine too but these companies, that now have Vancouver by the balls due to the massive difference in estimated and actual costs, are using that power to do some pretty evil things.

Here's a quote from the Post “Do not have Pepsi or Dairy Queen sponsor your event,” read guidelines sent to VPL branch heads and supervisory staff last fall. “Coke and McDonald’s are the Olympic sponsors. If you are planning a kids’ event and approaching sponsors, approach McDonald’s and not another well-known fast-food outlet.”Read more: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/01/13/adrian-macnair-with-glowing-hearts-olympics-kills-the-arts.aspx#ixzz0fiIyTCO0

A kid's event? McDonalds? How is this even remotely possible when every time I turn on CNN I see some news clip about how fat and lazy American children are, and I'm sure Canadians are not far behind. If I send my kid to a library, yes a library, public funded, wholesome, etc... I do not want them being fed McDonalds, how about something even remotely healthy like iron filings instead!

These poor athletes who get paid nothing while billionaires sit back and and do nothing while collecting their second billion dollars are also advertising for McDonalds. You spend your whole life training for one day, how much debt do these people have. If they don't win gold do they go get a minimum wage job? Where do they get thier education? Of course they'll take a few hundred thousand to say they eat McDonalds, they almost have to! But does anyone really think that Olympians eat McDonalds? I don't, Kate doesn't, most people I know probably don't but you know who I bet does think they eat McDonalds, the children of Canada. Think they're going to have a full understanding of what food they should and should not be eating, no way in hell. We have allergies that didn't exist 50 years ago, every one of us seems to suffer from some issue, lactose intolerance, gluten allergies, the list is almost endless. I don't think we're just now identifying these conditions, I think they're new. I think places like McDonalds and the slaughterhouses that feed chickens steroids and their own ground up parents and siblings exclusively are the cause of many of these ailments. The worst part is we know, we know what is happening but still we allow our children to be lied to and sent down a destructive path all so that some of the richest people in the world can have a few more million.

Oh yeah, they're also telling some of the citizens of Vancouver to leave the city during the games or stay indoors to accommodate the 300,000 tourists. They're also told some small businesses in certain areas of the city to close up shop for the duration of the games. Only the big companies are allowed to make money of these games.

Boo.

Canada plays Norway at 7:30 tonight, I'm excited