Lincicome: It's about the athletes not the politics at the Olympics
If I've been asked once I've been asked ... well, once, what is this Olympic boycott thing all about?
Before I can answer I am also asked, "Are there mountains in Beijing?"
Good questions both and having once been a student of Mandarin Chinese, I feel qualified to answer. "Wo bu ji dao," I answer.
Translated roughly that means, "Dunno," or "Whatever."
Some background here.
In my early adulthood I did manage to learn Mandarin and I can still sing "You Are My Sunshine," in Chinese as well as anyone from Beijing, accompanying myself on a tuned six string.
My Far East education had to do with serving the good old US of A in time of peace, that happy space between Korea and Vietnam. I could have studied either Russian or Chinese, the options identified to me that Russian was for optimists and Chinese was for pessimists. That may be reversed now. Wo bu ji dao.
But mostly my tongue has lapsed into more familiar speech, and I must say that all the use Chinese ever did me was to be able to order a suit in Tokyo and fried rice in Schaumburg.
The measure of these things comes, as most things do, around to sports. The opening of China we remember had to do with Ping-Pong. That led to the 2008 Summer Games and synchronized diving, one of which is forgivable.
And now it is China's turn again, and a spate of indignity is leading to hurt feelings on both sides. Should we reject the coming Beijing Winter Games because of China's occupation and treatment of Tibet? Because of China's treatment of a Muslim minority, the Uighurs? Or is it because of the mystery over the condition of Peng Shuai, a tennis player?
Well, we didn't do anything the last time and those same human rights issues existed then, except for Peng Shuai, an Olympic teenager at the time and not a Grand Slam doubles champion or accuser of sexual abuse by some vice premier or other.
Our response is to deny China the presence of our diplomats, those posturing nabobs in puffy suits and wool hats who wouldn't know a curling stone from the Nordic combined. Not their fault, of course; nobody does.
And to answer the second question. Yes, Beijing does have mountains, sort of, not that any will be used for the Games. Skiing venues are up to 140 miles away and will require artificial snow. No matter. Torino proved that hills are not necessary as long as there is an arena for the women's figure skating final, the main event that justifies 16 days of hat hair.
The idea that China should be scolded for using slalom races and ice dancing to glorify itself while human rights are ignored assumes that the Chinese are taking themselves as seriously as the Olympic movement does itself, and the importance of both is hugely exaggerated.
So, why bother? We turn to the wisdom of that great American philosopher, Otter in "Animal House" who said it best. "I think this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture on somebody's part." Thus do we have the nonattendance of officials China says weren't invited anyhow. Nah, nah. Take that.
Inevitably, the light and noise leave, the world looks somewhere else and the Olympic site becomes a used dateline, like Lillehammer or Pyeongchang, left with empty ski jumps and melted speed skating rinks, or at worst, Sarajevo, where the Olympic lesson of peace and harmony was not only mocked but utterly destroyed.
Politics have used the Olympics and nearly always failed, such as the boycotted games in Moscow and in Los Angeles, the staged propaganda of Nazi Berlin and the tragedy in Munich, as sad an event as ever associated with sports that still changed nothing.
The athletes - and wherever the Games are it should always be about the athletes - will carry the memory forever, truly the taking part not just the glory of winning.
For the rest of us, the Beijing Winter Games will fade, like my old Mandarin lessons, and nothing will change, the odd ski race or spinning ice skater only occasionally brought to mind as are the faint strains of "You Are My Sunshine."