Glenn Beck Is Even Wrong in the Future

He just pulls this stuff out of his ass.


Yesterday, in furtherance of his indictment of Barack Obama as an Olympics-mongering gamewhore, Glenn Beck pointed out that the Olympics suck and Vancouver lost $1 billion when it hosted them. Next year.

In as sad an indication we've seen yet of how low the politico-media complex has fallen, it took the fucking White House of the United States of America to point out, on its blog, that you can't lose money on the 2010 Olympics if it's still 2009:

RHETORIC: BECK SAID VANCOUVER LOST $1 BILLION WHEN IT "HAD THE OLYMPICS."
Glenn Beck said, "Vancouver lost, how much was it? they lost a billion dollars when they had the Olympics."

http://gawker.com/5371272/glenn-beck-is-even-wrong-in-the-future

past is sheer bollocks, since, as I understand it, Atlanta had to build up their infrastructure to handle the Olympics and still made a profit--the event even spurred some development. Sure there was some violence--but it came from a right-wing crazy, didn't it? (A guy who, at a guess, would likely be a Beck fan in the here and now, n'est-ce pas?) Beck is totally useless.

after hosting the '76 Games. And who can blame him? I mean, Vancouver is ONLY ON THE COMPLETE OTHER FECKING SIDE OF CANADA!!

And, I mean, the 1976 Games were so RECENT, too!!!!!!

What a maroon. Beck also doesn't appear to have heard that ever since 1984, when Los Angeles proved that it was possible to emerge from a Games not only solvent but with a tidy profit if one simply brought corporate sponsorship into the equation, the Olympics have been a MONEY-MAKING proposition for their host cities. Not a money-loser.

Really, why does Lonesome Rhodes think cities beg and bid to host the Olympics these days? By the time the moment rolled around to award the '84 Summer Games in 1978, no one wanted to host them anymore but New York (which lost the vote to be the US bid city to Los Angeles), LA, and Tehran! (LA was chosen with no final vote!) Reason: the Olympics had put Montreal so badly in hock the whole movement was in danger of dying if someone didn't come to the financial rescue (the boycotts weren't helping either). The answer: Using what the host city already had, plus introducing corporate sponsorship to help finance whatever they didn't have that they needed.

Ever since corporate sponsorship, cities have raced to bid for the Games and lobbied frantically to be chosen. That's because hosting the Olympics isn't just prestigious, it MAKES MONEY. DUH.

Honestly, it's as if he's lived in a cave the past 40 years.

Oh, no wait--Lonesome Rhodes isn't just dumb, he said this dumb thing because he doesn't care about the FACTS, he just wants to say something to make Obama LOOK BAD. Whew. Almost forgot.

But Lord...does he have to say things so easily refutable??

Edited to add:

I remember that in the late '70s some were proposing a different solution to the host city financial problem: rotate each Olympics (summer and winter) amongst only four cities that had already hosted them and thus had all the facilities already in place, rather than choosing new host cities for each Games.

Also, adding that another benefit to Olympic host cities is that they have often ended up building athletic facilities that have stayed in place as national training centers for a particular sport and thus not only continued to attract athletes to the host city (I know that has been true of the speedskating facilities, for example) but also to attract national and world championships to that city in the future, which means they keep generating revenue long after the Games are over.

In short, the downsides to a city hosting the Games these days are not financial, they are things like the way its residents get inconvenienced--especially those the host city would rather you not see so much of, such as the homeless. I am not belittling that problem, which is real. But you know damn well Glenn Beck wasn't thinking of the poor homeless folks when he implied an Olympics would be bad for Chicago.

I heard that somewhere.