olympics and politics

When is something not a political issue? I find it a little odd all this protestation about protests, all these proclamations by politicians, sports pundits, and athletes that the Olympics are about "amateur" competition. Well, of course, the Olympics are about sports, but they've also always been about more than sports. They were intended as means for promoting international peace and understanding. So they've always been political.

At the same time, the Olympics have also become economically valuable and an opportunity for promoting national pride. You can't just divide the political from the rest of life. If you want to disagree with the political statements protesters make that's one thing, but pretending that the Olympics isn't making its own strident political statement, that events like the Torch run are not in themselves political is just pure fantasy.