Chicago: Slap in the Face

Yes, it’s a slap, a huge slap. Despite Barack Obama’s personal support of a city that was the cradle of his political career, Chicago was eliminated in the International Olympic Committee’s first round of votes, even before Tokyo, and wasn’t even in the running against Rio de Janeiro, the final choice for the 2016 games.

This affront mars the president less than it demonstrates how America has fallen down in the dumps, how it is weakened by the worst crisis since the 1930’s, the fact that it is a mouthpiece of a criticized model and is, for some, obsolete when faced with Brazil, a young and emerging power that can make these games the motor of an urban revolution and the vehicle for a new image.

Don’t you agree? The United States has surely suffered from a lack of stature for its 2016 project. The dogma of private financing for the gigantic sporting event foreshadowed a repeat of Atlanta in 1996. I remember, moreover, my irritation at the time over the mercantile stinginess of the organizers. The few spaces that were open free to the public were limited to the courts of the stadium and Centennial Park, a patch of concrete with poor fountains, transformed into a pathetic carnival decorated only by the sponsors’ tents.

There were indeed first-rate sports facilities, but [the event] lacked the breath of the nation, the investment of the state and a window to a culture that went beyond the ads of the child of Coca-Cola country.

Chicago is not Atlanta. The legendary capital of the Midwest is a sublime city, powerful and unknown, which deserved its hour of international glory and a little more respect than elimination in the quarter-finals.

The Obama team members, mostly from the “Windy City,” were, like him, certainly driven by political design (a payback I referenced earlier) but also by the wish to refocus, both geographically and culturally, on the neglected heart of America, where only the east and west coasts seem to hold the privilege of having cities. The team, however, committed the serious error of involving their president too much in the promotion of Chicago. The presence of Obama in Copenhagen should have been the last decisive push for a high-level candidate city.

And yet, as we discovered today, it didn’t have a chance.