Rich vs Poor

How can anyone support the Olympics when people are suffering in Haiti? Twice this weekend I overheard such a comment and I was immediately reminded of my mother telling me to eat my vegetables because children were starving in Biafra. (I know I dated myself, google it)

Later, I was having lunch with friends and they were chuckling about the weather being too warm and delighting in the potential disruption and fantasizing about ways to breech security or generally mess with the games to embarrass them. I laughed but didn’t really feel good about it. I know they were kidding, the real implications are that the only ones that will end up paying for any misfortune to befall the Olympics will be the people trying to get to work to pay the tax bill. I doubt the Crown Prince of Denmark will be that inconvenienced, in his limo, stuck in traffic. I’m hoping for perfect weather and inept vandals.

Much of the protest and unease about the Olympics is about rich verses poor. The two most visible bumper stickers belie this “Health Care before Olympics” and “No Olympics on Native Land”. I heard an interview on CBC with a Native woman that was against the games, stating that many members of her reserve had scored jobs working on the Sea to Sky highway expansion and that it was a terrible thing. They blew their money on trucks and drugs and generally were causing havoc. To me, these are issues about poverty and I certainly understand using the games, as a symbol of wealth and corruption to create awareness and a conversation about the destitution most in the world experience, but I’m not sure health care and Native land protests are that effective. I doubt that without the Olympics any of that money would have been spent on health care and Native leaders, eager to create some economic activity, are very visible in their support for the games. Unfortunately, the poor can’t afford the marketing expertise to sell their message and most of the super rich is too short sighted to see anything beyond today’s bottom line. The Big Three car company’s being great examples of that. No one, with a functioning brain, couldn't see the end of the gas guzzling SUV coming?

My stepdaughter, a couple of years ago, suggested that I stop writing and get a job at Safeway so that we won’t be poor and could buy a house like all of her friends live in. (She also lives with her mother in a neighbourhood not unlike the opening credits to Weeds with the ticky tacky houses and both parents being lawyers that all look the same. I doubt any of them worked at Safeway to afford their lifestyle, but she was twelve and Safeway somehow seemed glamorous.) We rent an apartment with rent controls in a mixed inner city neighbourhood with zero hope in ever being able to afford a house. It is a rare year that we make enough to stay out of debt but I explained to her that we’re not poor and we made a choice. I don’t have to follow my artistic muse and work in a field that is freelance and fickle but I choose to. That’s who I am and it probably has a lot to do with why she likes me. (She now professes to want to be an accountant but knowing her artistic sensibility I doubt this Alex P. Keaton tendency will endure. I hope it does, I'll need somewhere to live when I'm old) I could choose to go to an Olympic event if I wanted to. I’m certain that the Olympic partners at VISA would be happy to lend me the money, at 18%. People in Haiti are too poor to have the privilege of choice.

Gord and I went to a birthday party atop Grouse Mountain on the weekend. I fretted about what to wear worrying that my last year sweater wasn’t respectable enough for a party thrown by people that can afford such an extravagance. I caught myself before we left remembering that we were invited because they like us and they are nice people and no one cares about my sweater.

On the way up on the gondola kids, in expensive snowboard gear, chatting and having a good time, surrounded us. I think I was the only one listening to the guide point out the white Olympic rings in the inlet. Over the din, I think I heard him say that the rings will turn from white to coloured when the games start and then turn red every time Canada wins gold. I am sure that will be moving. In the time that I wrote this blog I’ve watched a twenty-story banner cover the side of the Royal Bank building saying it supports Team Canada. That’s nice. We’re awesome. Yeah us.

It’s easy to blame the Olympics as a symbol of everything bad, but I think that lets us all off the hook a bit. We’re all so concerned with which new cell phone to get that we forget the implications. I feel sad for the plight of those with less than me. Olympic partner VISA allowed me to send money to the Red Cross, guilt assuaged, not really. One of the snowboarders had a curling iron in her back pack. How could she be so concerned about her après snowboarding hair when people in Haiti don’t even have brushes? It’s hard to get my head around, but maybe Mom had a point about Biafra and the vegetables.