Imagine if Games started in 7 days instead of 7 years

MANALAPAN, Fla. - The Miami press corps isn't expecting an invitation to Michael Jordan's new hacienda for a last-minute Olympic announcement.

There won't be any mojitos served by Jordan's girlfriend and he won't pass out any chubby cigars from his collection of vintage Cohibas to celebrate a Chicago Olympiad.

As I wrote last week, the two-time gold medalist, six-time Bulls world champion and international ambassador for Chicago, has stiffed the 2016 Committee's final push to get The Games.

I suggested it was so he could get a head start on the President's Cop golf tournament in San Francisco, where he will be honorary co-captain.

But now we know there is another excuse.

"Due to his commitments with the Bobcats he is unable to travel to Copenhagen," Patrick Sandusky, Chicago 2016 spokesman, told ABC 7's Ben Bradley.

The Bobcats?

Jordan's excuse for not going to Copenhagen, where he should be leading Chicago's athletic delegation, is that he is too busy being a part owner of the Charlotte Bobcats NBA team? Maybe he'll find a way to be there for Charlotte when that city makes an Olympic bid-in the next century.

Jordan aside, you will not be able to escape the Olympics this week.

If Chicago gets The Games, you will not be able to escape it for the next seven years and beyond.

If Chicago doesn't get The Games there will be a few burps of retrospection and we'll move on.

As we are preoccupied with The Games, the world is changing so quickly all around us that it is difficult to imagine what the landscape will look like in 2016.

The U.S. has one war in Iraq that is supposed to be winding down; another war in Afghanistan that is ramping up, despite being the older of the two fights; and a prospective war in Iran.

Can you imagine if The Games were actually to begin in Chicago in seven days instead of seven years? The thought of athletes, coaches, trainers, spectators, tourists, political leaders and media arriving in Chicago with such uncertainty is unsettling to say the least.

• Suddenly, it seems so mundane that concern over health care legislation was the reason President Obama originally announced he wouldn't attend the Olympic bid festivities in Copenhagen.

Health care? Which plan will include treatment for radiation poisoning from a small nuclear device launched by Iran?

• Most days, average Chicagoans go about their business without delving into deep thought about foreign policy.

The action last week at the United Nations seemed to generate more than the usual chatter over lunch tables and on the street.

It was difficult to imagine any appearance could surpass that of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. Even though his 90-minute speech was so long it had to be translated by two different translators, what he said was fascinating.

It is not often that you get a chance to know the thoughts and hear the actual words of a madman. But Gadhafi was topped by the President of Iraq, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The actual presence of Ahmadinejad at the United Nations was an affront to common sense and shows the absolute dysfunction of the UN.

President Ahmadinejad has disavowed the existence of the Holocaust and continues to publicly call for the extermination of Israel by pushing it into the sea.

The fact that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rose to forcefully defend his nation was not a surprise. It was a surprise that more than 50 years after the end of WWII, any Israeli leader had to offer evidence in support of the Holocaust and Israel's existence.

It was a bigger surprise that the U.N. would offer Ahmadinejad a platform. Such an invitation is reason enough to dismantle the UN. Or as Col. Gadhafi said, in his only reasonable suggestion, the U.N. should be moved to Libya. Why not.

• I hope if Chicago gets The Games, the public address announcements at the airports will have been changed. There is something about tourists being subjected to a warning about sneezing that makes it seem a little like you're arriving in Hooterville.

"Close off your nose and your mouth with tissue, sneeze into your sleeve and wash your hands" is the warning that comes from the overhead speakers.

Where should we drop off our shirts and coats to have the sleeves cleaned? Is there a city contractor for that?

• Sight seen at Midway Airport last Friday: uniformed police officers from Mississippi escorting a team of athletes off a jetliner.

You might expect such protection for Olympic athletes from North Korea, Iraq, Iran or one of the nation's currently perched on the Axis of Evil.

But Mississippi Valley State University?

The Hornets were in Chicago to play Alabama State in the 2009 Chicago Football Classic on Saturday afternoon. MVSU, like most universities, has cops travel with them for out-of-town games.

Maybe it's to keep gamblers from tinkering with the players. Maybe college teams are bona fide terrorist targets, I don't know.

But get used to it.

If Chicago lands The Games, from that very moment, you will see things in this city that you never thought were possible.

• Chuck Goudie, whose column appears each Monday, is the chief investigative reporter at ABC 7 News in Chicago. The views in this column are his own and not those of WLS-TV. He can be reached by e-mail at chuckgoudie@gmail.com and followed at twitter.com/ChuckGoudie.