Source Hollywood Reporter:
As the Winter Olympics in South Korea approach, many have started to ask whether the Olympics are culturally relevant anymore or are just an archaic expression of nationalism?
The Sochi Winter Olympics in Russia made $53 million in profits, but there are other more relevant stories than celebrating records broken, athletes detailing their personal sacrifices, or picturing all the smiling medal-adorned winners on Wheaties boxes.
The issues concern the impact the Olympic Games could have on personal, social and political struggles in the U.S. and around the world.
In the face of the rise of tyrants, the event is an opportunity to remind ourselves of the core values of the Games beyond flag-waving. It’s also an opportunity for athletes to express their opposition to the tyranny that is actively trying to stifle those values.
The standard for these values was set at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Adolf Hitler was obsessed with using the moment to promote the Nazi philosophy of Aryan superiority. Then a black man named Jesse Owens, the most successful Olympian that year, winning four track and field gold medals — “single-handedly crushing Hitler’s myth of Aryan supremacy,” according to the biography Triumph. Hitler was so angered that he wanted blacks banned from future games.
Read the rest of this interesting story in Hollywood Reporter:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/kareem-abdul-jabbar-olympics-are-more-relevant-time-tyrants-1080056