Passing the torch

MANIFESTO

In a fake that Joe Montana would've been proud of, the Olympic torch was spirited in and out of San Francisco yesterday with few untoward incidents.

Isn't this whole Olympics thing supposed to unify nations? Indeed,

The founder of the modern Games, Baron Pierre de Coubertin—a man primarily interested, it's worth remembering, in the pedagogical, moralizing effects of sport ... thought of what he called Olympism as, indeed, a "religion" of sorts: its commandments were the "spirit" of friendship" that the Games would encourage and the idea that gentlemanly cooperation in sporting events would create (as he put it) "chivalry," all expressed in the athletes' creed "of honor and disinterest."

In other words, the Games, and everything associated with them, are supposed to act as a uniter and not a divider. Oh well, we've seen how well that's worked out for someone else who made that claim.