Jews, too, have a stake in the Olympic committee’s cowardly attempt to stifle gay rights protests at Sochi this winter
By Rachel Shukert for Tablet
The
London Olympics last year, I’m sure you’ll agree, were a smashing
success, despite all the public grumbling about “unreadiness” and
“terrible British weather” that preceded them. Michael Phelps and the
U.S. women’s gymnastic team were dizzyingly triumphant, nobody died in
any freak accidents and/or terrorist attacks, and thanks to Kenneth
Branagh and his Abraham Lincoln costume, the world finally learned of
the glorious achievements of Isambard Kingdom Brunel.So, by the immutable physical laws of pessimism (a subject in which I have a hereditary doctorate), it stands to reason that the 2014 Winter Olympics will be a magnet for certain catastrophe, a fate the International Olympic Committee, ever eager to defend their place on the wrong side of history, seemed to presuppose by choosing Sochi, Russia—a subtropical resort destination with pictures of palm trees—palm trees!—on its Wikipedia page—for competitions in alpine skiing, lugeing, and other things that require the fairly constant presence of ice and snow.
But even so, I don’t think they realized just how bad things would get.
I can’t pretend to exactly understand the reasoning behind the Putin government’s relatively sudden and utterly horrific enshrined persecution of homosexuals and those who would rise to their defense—or even, given the malignant and wholly purposeful ambiguity of the law, might simply happen to know a couple. The best explanation anyone seems to have is that Putin is merely exercising the age-old prerogative of the demagogue: Transfer all responsibility of your country’s decay to some defenseless enemy within—I imagine posters in St. Petersburg are circulating even now featuring grotesque caricatures of Neil Patrick Harris with his tentacles wrapped around the globe.
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