"Why can't a woman be more like a man...."
- Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe
Before anyone goes off the deep end and hits their Flame-On button, I'd like to take this opportunity to let you know that what follows has absolutely nothing to do with gender wars, women or men, except tangentially. I feel as though I've just asked someone not to beat me up until I take off my glasses. Oh well.
When professor Henry Higgins makes that lament to Colonel Pickering in My Fair Lady , everyone knows it's the last gasp of a confirmed bachelor about to fall hopelessly in love with the gutter snipe-cum-Lady, Eliza Doolittle. In his meek protest, Higgins fumes about women being irrational, their heads full of cotton, hay and rags. He goes so far as to call them maddening and infuriating hags.
By contrast, men in his world are honest and thoroughly square, eternally noble, historic'ly fair. After nattering on about such nonsense for the requisite two-and-a-half minutes any decent Broadway song runs, Higgins delivers the gem of wisdom in this sea of piffle in the song's last line. "Why can't a woman be like me?" Indeed, why not.
Now, as promised, let's neuter the batty professor's little lesson and begin to get to the point.
One of the most maddening and infuriating rallying cries of unreason and intemperance from the culture wars of the late 1960s and early 1970s in my home and native land - the U.S. in case you've forgotten - was "America: Love It or Leave It." It was as seductive as it was facile to the Vietnam hawks and they plastered their bumpers with it from coast to coast. More directive than the sticker often placed alongside it, "My Country Right or Wrong," it embodied the simplistic conclusions of those who saw protest and disagreement as treasonous acts. Yes, it was ironic, considering the country was born out of protest and revolution, but irony wasn't their strong suit.
I could never see it without giving passing thought to dropping a lighted match down their gas tank's fill spout. But then, I would have simply been proving their point. Kind of like the message a government sends when it practices capital punishment: "We're going to execute you, Mr. Murderer, because some problems are just so big the only solution is to kill someone... which I think was your conclusion and what brought us to this sad state of affairs to begin with."
We're more than a little pregnant here in Tiny Town. Our due date is February 12, 2010, when we're set to give birth to a bouncing baby 800 pound gorilla, the XXI Winter Olympics. Many of us are thrilled and excited and can't wait for the Games to begin. Many of the rest of us are appalled and horrified and can't wait for the Games to be over. Having failed to win over those who wish the Olympics were elsewhere with their excitement, enthusiasm and promise of Legacies, some in the former camp are now asking the naysayers to climb aboard the Hype Express and "be more like me."
In other words, shut up already. Love it or leave it.
Hmmmm. Count to 10, stop grinding your teeth. That's better.
I wouldn't have thought it necessary to say but apparently I'm wrong. I know it may seem like an absurd juggling act for the no-shade-of-grey crowd, but one can in fact love Whistler and strongly dislike, hate even, the Olympics. To stretch the point even further, one can voice disapproval of, act out and even organize protests against the Olympics - as well as some of the more distasteful things Whistler is doing to prepare for them - and still love the town, want it to succeed as the little resort municipality that could and, yes, even stick around without giving a thought to leaving.
To do otherwise is dishonest. To recommend those who disagree with your enthusiasm, should you be an athletic, er, Olympic supporter, shut up and fade into the forest does nothing to further the vibrancy of this town and everything to bland things down. What is your vision for Whistler? A Stepford resort where automatons bow and scrape and pretend no real people with real passions live here?
A big part of the problem with the Olympics is their increasing blandness. That's not as big a problem as their corporate corruption and wholesale abandonment of the Olympic Principles but it goes a long way to explain why people have difficulty remembering any particular Olympic moment tied to place.
Don't think so? Okay, take this little test. What do you remember about, say, Nagano? Time's up. Nothing? You and almost everyone else. What do you remember about Calgary? Everyone I've asked this question has had the same answer: Eddie the Eagle and the Jamaican Bobsleigh team. Why? They were so human. In a very real way, both embodied what Olympic Principle #2 calls "... a way of life based on the joy found in effort." They didn't stand a chance of winning but they were a joy to watch.
If Whistler is to be remembered - and being remembered is one key to leveraging our Olympic exposure - it isn't going to be for our paved parking lots, our tarted up pedestrian stroll between the village and the Benchlands or any of the other Barbie projects we've undertaken. The Barbie problem with the Olympics is one of nurturing; they've become all breast and no nipple. Nice to look at but, in the end, they leave you hungry.
I don't hold out much hope for the athletes themselves to be what people remember about Whistler. The performance differences between elite athletes are about as vast and exciting as the difference between the colours white and off-white. If Whistler is going to be remembered it'll be the people experience visitors have while they're here.
To that end, despite loathing the Olympics, I'll be out there doing my best to engage everyone I run into in February and March. Not in a don't-worry-be-happy way but in a very human, very personal way. I want them to know real people live here, real people who hold real points of view and are passionate and proud. I want them to see past the Barbiefication and come away with a sense of place that'll make 'em want to come back once the circus leaves town.
But I don't want them to be more like me. And I certainly don't feel a need to be more like them. We'll all be better off if we just be ourselves, warts and all.
