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Not crazy, just beyond help

SCENE: The interior of an office. A silver-haired man sits in an over-stuffed club chair, furiously scribbling in a notebook. Another man lies on a chaise that looks like it belongs in Madonna's boudoir.
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SCENE: The interior of an office. A silver-haired man sits in an over-stuffed club chair, furiously scribbling in a notebook. Another man lies on a chaise that looks like it belongs in Madonna's boudoir. After a moment of silence, the prone man speaks.

 

Max: I'm not quite sure where to start.

Shrink: Mmmmm......

M: It's the Olympics. I'm having trouble coming to grips with it.

S: Post-Olympic depression is a well-documented syndrome.

M: That's not the problem, doc. I had pre-Olympic depression. Well, depression isn't probably the right word. Rage or outrage is probably closer to the point.

S: You weren't a supporter?

M: I'd rather host a convention of the international cocaine cartel. At least they're honest about being crooks... and they don't ask the taxpayers to underwrite their party.

S: So what's the problem?

M: Well, clearly the problem is me.

S: How so?

M: 50,000 Frenchmen can't be wrong, right? Whatever the hell that means. Everyone else seemed to love the Olympics. What I saw as wretched excess, a modern-day Roman circus meant to placate the poor, dumb masses while a slice of the global elite - rich, powerful, ruthless robber barons - partied, networked, and were treated like the royalty they think they are, all at someone else's expense, mind you, everyone else saw as a grand time, a noble cause, the epitome of sport. Clearly it must be my perception that's way off.

S: Why do you think, to paraphrase Sigmund ( moment of reverential silence as Shrink casts eyes upward ) this cigar wasn't just a cigar, that is to say, the Olympics weren't what they seemed to be?

M: That's the interesting point, doc. On the one hand, they were about sport and the unique, reverential place sport holds in society.

S: What does that mean?

M: I'm not certain, to be honest. But sport is, pardon the pun, one field of play where the normal rules of society, at least Canadian society, don't seem to apply.

S: For example?

M: Take the whole Own the Podium program and compare it with, say, education. When government funds education, it tries to level the playing field. While it might make sense to target education dollars at society's smartest kids, the ones who might go on to invent great things, cure cancer, figure out how they get the caramel in Caramilk bars, stuff like that, as opposed to funding programs for kids whose highest life achievement might be tying their own shoes, we don't go there. We spend the dough on the special needs kids because it's the right thing to do.

Not so sport. There, the government spends to further the infinitesimal increases in performance of people already performing at the top of their game while they gut funding for school playgrounds. OTP didn't fund the development of elite athletes; it funded athletes already in the eliteosphere. What's so special about sports that we're willing to turn everything we believe about universality on its head?

S: What do you think?

M: I don't know. I thought that's why I'm paying you a C note an hour. But that's just part of the weirdness. In normal, polite society, if someone spent hour after hour, day after day, year after year pursuing something they have very little chance of achieving - a gold medal, say - and they did that at the expense of assuming the adult responsibilities of earning a living and making a tangible contribution to society and they wanted taxpayers to fund their quest, hell, doc, they'd ship 'em off to you to get their head examined. But since it's sport, it's okay?

S: Well, some people take great pleasure in the performance and achievement of those people. How often did you hear, during the Olympics, a medal winner say they were inspired by the achievements of those who came before them?

M: So often it became cliché. But the universe from which the sample was drawn was, shall we say, skewed. That people pursuing the sports pathology were inspired by others similarly afflicted is kind of irrelevant, isn't it? What about all the non-Olympians out there? I'm guessing most kids were not only not inspired but were actually turned off sport by the whole gold medal scene.

S: How so?

M: Think about it. Competitive sport is all about winning. But there's only one winner. In that equation, everybody else is a loser. Most kids are smart enough to know there is no gold medal in their future. So what's it say about us, as a society, if that seems to be the thing we value above all else? If that's the thing we're ready to put our lives on hold to support? Hey, if it were me, it'd turn me off sport entirely.

S: You don't find it inspiring?

M: Inspirational? No. Compelling entertainment? Yes. Good government policy? No. Good business sense? Not a chance. If you want to inspire people to lead more active lifestyles, abandon their computers and couches and get sweaty, actually pursue the stated principles of Olympism, you don't do it by exhalting something they'll never become. You do it by selling the fun of sport, the thrill of playing, the sense of accomplishment when you do something a little better than you did the last time you did it.

S: Mmmm....

M: Take skiing, for example. Talk about a sport circling the bowl. Gold medalists aren't going to sell skiing to the next generation skiers any more than the stupid stories editors made me write about 23-year-old cliff jumpers are. Skiing is one of the most thrilling things anyone can do. And that's the point that's lost in glorifying Olympic athletes. Anyone can ski... and anyone who does ski is going to experience that unadulterated fun, the thrill of gravity taking over and pulling you downhill, that rush as you accelerate over stunning terrain.

S: So you think the Olympics should be abolished?

M: Hell no. Just recognize them for the corporate con games they are. Get government out of 'em, let them find - and fund - their own enterprise. If they can survive in the entertainment marketplace on corporate sponsorship and volunteer slave labour, more power to 'em. Just stop with the national nightmare that this two-week party was a defining moment for the country and get back to work figuring out how we're going to pay for it without completely gutting more important, legitimate governmental initiatives.

S: I'm not sure I can help you.

M: Beyond help, eh? Wish I had a nickel for every time I've heard that.

S: I suspect that'd be a lot of nickels.

FADE TO BLACK