I have been watching the Olympics...cheering my country on and I've been known to yell at the TV every once in a while. Yet I'm not going to write here about the athletes or the medals...because from my perspective any athlete who has the skill and dedication to make it to the Olympics deserves a medal.What I'd like to address is the insular thinking that seems to have marred some aspects of the Olympics...which is in my home country and thereby causes concern.
Yes, there have been glitches and quite honestly the Olympic organizers do not control the weather...although I think given the warmest winter on record some of them might have sold their soul to be able to do so...
What irks me is some more fundamental things that quite honestly have caused me to cringe to date.
The first thing was the opening ceremonies....I like our national anthem....so why did we allow a sixteen year-old singer to make it jazzy and provide her own rendition as opposed to belting it out...strong, proud and free! This is not American Idol, where you get praised for making it your own...this is our identity...what were the organizers thinking...oh well, let's just make the anthem a little more contemporary? We will show the world ...that hey, we don't really like our anthem...we will bastardize it to show we are hip? Strike one for the organizing committee...had they spoken to any regular folk they would have been told flat out that you don't mess with the anthem...
The second thing....opening ceremonies again....every stereotype that every on
e in the world has about Canada was reinforced....certainly there is the historic perspective and I am a big fan of showcasing the native culture in our country....but we have a multicultural mosaic second to none in the world...we are so inclusive and proud of that and we have amazing cities to showcase...not just the wheatfields and snow...come one...first you try to make us hip with the anthem and then you make it look like we are stuck in some sort of 19th century backwater...Strike two.
Strike three is the Olympic cauldron....the Olympics are to be about inclusion and harmony. So what do they do? They put the Olympic cauldron behind a ratty chain link fence...to keep the ne'er-do-wells away....reason...because they chose to put the cauldron in an area where they media has their outlets and as such it is a security perimeter...Huh? Why would they put it there and keep the key symbol of the Olympics away from the people....and the attitude from the organizing
committee has been nothing short of arrogant in this regard....somewhat of the "too bad, so sad" attitude, until today...where they realized they had a mounting public relations disaster on their hand and needed to deal with it...But once again..had they asked the general public what they would like to have access to and see (that doesn't cost anything) it would have been the flame.
In reality this is also what happens in corporations....the "group think" from senior leadership that doesn't seek input from those most impacted by potential decisions. As I noted in my previous entry about the Undercover Boss series....same thing....wow, what a difference when the CEO sees what it is like to be on the ground...
The first thing was the opening ceremonies....I like our national anthem....so why did we allow a sixteen year-old singer to make it jazzy and provide her own rendition as opposed to belting it out...strong, proud and free! This is not American Idol, where you get praised for making it your own...this is our identity...what were the organizers thinking...oh well, let's just make the anthem a little more contemporary? We will show the world ...that hey, we don't really like our anthem...we will bastardize it to show we are hip? Strike one for the organizing committee...had they spoken to any regular folk they would have been told flat out that you don't mess with the anthem...
The second thing....opening ceremonies again....every stereotype that every on
e in the world has about Canada was reinforced....certainly there is the historic perspective and I am a big fan of showcasing the native culture in our country....but we have a multicultural mosaic second to none in the world...we are so inclusive and proud of that and we have amazing cities to showcase...not just the wheatfields and snow...come one...first you try to make us hip with the anthem and then you make it look like we are stuck in some sort of 19th century backwater...Strike two.Strike three is the Olympic cauldron....the Olympics are to be about inclusion and harmony. So what do they do? They put the Olympic cauldron behind a ratty chain link fence...to keep the ne'er-do-wells away....reason...because they chose to put the cauldron in an area where they media has their outlets and as such it is a security perimeter...Huh? Why would they put it there and keep the key symbol of the Olympics away from the people....and the attitude from the organizing
committee has been nothing short of arrogant in this regard....somewhat of the "too bad, so sad" attitude, until today...where they realized they had a mounting public relations disaster on their hand and needed to deal with it...But once again..had they asked the general public what they would like to have access to and see (that doesn't cost anything) it would have been the flame.In reality this is also what happens in corporations....the "group think" from senior leadership that doesn't seek input from those most impacted by potential decisions. As I noted in my previous entry about the Undercover Boss series....same thing....wow, what a difference when the CEO sees what it is like to be on the ground...
Perhaps next Olympics...the organizing committee should team up with Undercover Boss and consider themselves as tourists...as opposed to putting something together that seems to smack of insular thinking.
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