The Great Wall

 The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games are coming to a TV near you soon - a very carefully controlled TV.

As protests continue in Tibet against Chinese opression, the all-powerful machinery of the economic market has moved into high gear. Nothing must touch the edifying world-wide show of Olympic fair play and athletic endeavor. Please don't speak of "boycotts."

That's so 1980.

Full reports about the crackdown in Tibet are hard to come by. All foreign journalists have been expelled from the country, pardon me, "autonomous region." What has filtered out speaks of at least 140 dead. The most recent photos in The New York Times carried an editor's note stating the photographer (a "tourist") had requested he or she not be identified.

It was announced last week that, during the Games, TV crews will be prohibited from broadcasting from Tiananmen Square. Too risky - some foolhardy onlooker might hold up a protest banner.

The Chinese government, which maintains what is perhaps the world's most highly-sophisticated Internet censorship, has only one difficult moment left to control: medal ceremonies. That's where the International Olympic Committee steps in to help. Remember Tommie Smith and John Carlos and Mexico City in 1968? For their fists raised in the Black Power salute, the two were expelled from the Games.

So what is the democracy-loving U.S. government doing about the situation? Not much.

The United States is financing massive borrowing for its own never-ending military initiatives with Chinese cash. Chinese support of the Sudanese government's atrocities in Darfur is annoying, but certainly not worthy of having to raise taxes in the U.S. - not in an election year - and oil has yet to be discovered in Tibet.

The Dalai Lama was recently awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. That's pretty much where official U.S. love stops. Bush has called on Chinese leaders to talk to the Dalai Lama without insisting China satisfy any preconditions in the human rights department. This is the same Bush who won't talk to some other world leaders without their prior total capitulation.

NBC, having paid $2.3 billion for the broadcast rights of three Games (Athens, Turin and Beijing) also has a vested interest in avoiding a boycott.

NPR's "Talk of the Nation" had an interesting story about athletes and blogging last week. Under new guidelines, they will not be allowed to upload personal photos of other athletes, events or pretty much anything else. To avoid infringing copyrights, athletes will be reduced to showing you nothing more than their bedrooms in the Olympic Village.

Are there any more freedoms we can erase this summer? I'm sure they'll think of something.

Fortunately, public opinion does not always follow governmental policies and financial interests. In many forums, calls for a boycott are popping up more frequently every day. Many seem to agree China should not be allowed the honor of hosting this great event.

Athletes who have trained years for the occasion should not be needlessly penalized. There are solutions, such as changing venue. Granted, it wouldn't be easy. Perhaps the Games would have to be postponed a year, but it is feasible.

If, instead, everything continues in the pretend-world of sanitized images this summer, many should feel shame. Some say the Games are all about sport and politics should never enter into the discussion. These same people must live on some distant, as-yet-to-be-discovered planet. The Games have always included politics. From Hitler's Berlin Games in 1936 to China blocking Taiwan from participating at Montreal in 1976 under the flag of the "Republic of China," politics have permeated every final Olympic medal tally.

The Olympic torch was lit on March 24 in Athens. Yesterday, in Beijing, it started its world tour. No, it will not be passing through Kansas City, but it will make a stop in San Francisco. I will be curious to read about what measures are put in place on U.S. soil to block protesters along the route. I can already guess what will happen when the torch passes through Lhasa, in Tibet.

China must alter its tune quickly., or much as I love watching the Games, I know I will not be tuning in, I will not be buying the corporate sponsors' products and I certainly won't have any respect for statements made about human rights by a government not willing to back up empty affirmations.