U.S. Feeds China Spin--Selena Roberts

• (Gusher-in-Chief: Ueberroth--former MLB commissioner)

(SI.com): BEIJING -- "The haze over the Bird's Nest possesses the air quality of a smoker's lung, and yet a group of spin artists on the Beijing scene Wednesday declared a blue-sky vision without a single catch in their throats....

• Yes, once the Visine kicks in you'll find any sign of decay or poverty within the pan of a camera has been walled off by Chinese officials obsessed with political appearances.

But the Olympic masters sitting at a podium for a press conference in matching blazers refused to recognize what lies beneath the Communist regime's welcome mat. Who were these pushers of the People's Republic behind the dais? They weren't official greeters from the Beijing Games machinery.

• They were leaders of the United States Olympic Committee, all but sitting on the knee of the host city, in ventriloquist doll pose, issuing talking points made in China....

Why did the cyclists' sorrow sound like a confessional coerced beneath a naked light bulb? In playing by China's rules the USOC acted as if it had adopted the host nation's rigid mores, its inflexible ethos. "We accepted an invitation," said Ueberroth. "We have the ability not to go."

• This is a false choice.

The invitation was to the Summer Games, not a masquerade ball where every country dresses up like propaganda tools and plays along with the host's ideology for 17 days. So why did Ueberroth sound like a pitch man for the new China's old ways?

• For one, he makes it clear that he owes China for saving the 1984 Olympics -- or the Peter Ueberroth Summer Games as its organizer --

when the Chinese government broke with the Soviet Union boycott and arrived in Los Angeles. It changed everything, Ueberroth kept saying. Several times during the lengthy press conference, Ueberroth expressed his gratitude to China,

• letting his personal thank you turn into perpetual debt service to the nation."...

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