Schreiner’s Media Landscape

I couldn’t believe it when I read it in the newspaper of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois where I lived before I moved to Utah. State government is closing a number of state parks, including Kickapoo State Park outside nearby Danville, to pay for their own fiscal incompetence. Residents of the area are fighting it but it’s probably a lost cause and indicative of the tragic and short-sighted attitude our so-called leaders have toward natural places and their contempt for the people who put them in power.

I used to go there often to hike, picnic and row my raft. It’s where I took my camera to practice videotaping wildlife, Nature, and work out in preparation for my grueling trip to Tibet and hike around Mount Kailash in 2005: the result being my documentary “Kora: Tibet and the Trail of Truth.” It was one of the few, remaining natural places in an area long decimated abd denuded by corporate and large-scale agriculture.

Actually, Kickapoo was far from being wild. It was reclaimed coal-mining ground that had been scarred and scraped beyond industrial use. So it was left to return to the Earth and the result was a strangely beautiful park made up of hills, forest, streams, ponds and other stuff Illinois never had much of and has even less of now. Kickapoo is ironically, unnatural.

But open or not, it’s a gleaming example of what humans can do to correct the environmental mistakes we’ve made. Sadly, it’s now also an example of how we just never learn.

The Chinese government got what it wanted from the Olympics. So they didn’t win as many medals as they wanted. So a couple of meaningless Americans got stabbed by a suicidal madman. So the army had to put down some skirmishes in the territories they occupy. The important thing was that the world did as the Chinese demanded and now, after being wined, dined, wowed and cowed, obediently goes home to say only great things.

But as the NYT, Washington Post and innumerable bloggers like me write, the world is not going to forget what China is despite their best propaganda efforts. They did prove their Olympic security is second to none but that’s to be expected from a regime where oppression is policy. What would’ve been a bigger, more pleasant surprise was if their tolerance and freedoms were increased and their promise of greater openness was fulfilled. Alas, those did not happen.

You can expect China to go back to the way it really is- not what they work so hard to make us believe it is. In fact, as some observers suggest, their regime may be more oppressive than ever to keep the population down after their day in the sun. Of course, now that they have more venues for foreigners to feel safe in that are more like their own western-hemispheric homes than a totalitarian mass prison, you can expect China to be more open to tourists. The ones with money, not protest signs.

Oh BTW- I also got what I wanted from the Olympics. 300 people clicked and watched at least a portion of my 2006 documentary “Kora: Tibet and the Trail of Truth” (stats from my Urchin service). And I got to use that cool Beijing Olympics protest logo (which also generated lots of hits). But this is probably- and hopefully- the last time it’s ever used.

I walked into Maui Tacos at 5400 South and State in SLC and immediately noticed, as I have been trained (conditioned?) to do, that all the TV sets in the place were tuned to the Olympics. As you may recall, I announced here April 21 that I am boycotting the Beijing Games because of their horrible human rights record and their environmental chicanery. It’s also a protest of the Bush Regime’s handling of our trade relationship with China and NBC’s historically Ameri-centric and generally piss-poor coverage of what might otherwise be considered the greatest spectacle in sports.

I was trapped. I sat down to eat with my back to all the sets but I couldn’t help seeing everyone else watching, even though what was on was the fencing competition which the U.S. swept hours earlier and which I had already read about on the Internet. It was immediately followed by a women’s beach volleyball match (is that a sport? Do they have frisbee and jarts too?) between the U.S. and the Netherlands. I finished the tacos (which were great BTW) and ran for the exit before I found out who won.

It made me wonder what the attraction of the Games is anyway. Is it watching sports you’d never ever watch any other time in your life between people you’ve never heard of and never will again? Is it hoping for a glimpse of something other than the inside of a stadium which could be in in Chicago, Utah or anywhere else in the world? Nearly all the events are not live (unless you’re up at 2 a.m.) so the attraction of the unpredictable isn’t there (especially knowing the NBC and the Chinese have their fingers on the Delete button.

No. This is why people are watching:

1) It’s the only thing on that’s not a rerun except for Monk, baseball and a handful or other junk.

2) It’s got Americans in it and we love the promise of kicking someone’s butt, even if it’s Surinam or Luxembourg.

3) It’s too hot outside for most people so sitting dumbly in front of the TV for hours with the AC on 72 is the only possible thing to do. Such is the American imagination.

4) Little girls in tight gymnastic suits or beach bikinis, strapping young men in rubber suits, and those endless heart-rendering video essays about the third-stringer on the archery team who overcame a bad hair day, a D on his biology mid-term, and his girlfriend dumping him to drag himself on to an airplane (having kicked anti-depressants) and spend a month’s all-expenses-paid vacation in one of the world’s top tourist destinations.

It was close but I got out of there just in time. My injuries are severe, my spirit all but broken. But despite the personal nightmare I experienced which I now have to work harder than ever to transcend, I’ll be back. Because I love Maui Tacos.

I’m surprised by the journalists upset at the International Olympic Committee for the Chinese government’s censorship of websites and failure to deliver the freedom of coverage the Chinese promised in order to get the Olympics. These are all smart, ostensibly and self-proclaimed experts on how media and government work. They are, however, apparently not experts on how China works or perhaps how the Olympics work either.

The Chinese government lies, cheats and does anything it can to get what it wants and the Olympics are no different. The fact that they are not awarding the “freedom” to news people they promised is not only consistent but exemplary of not only how China does things but also how the IOC and its individual, national subsidiaries are complicit, routinely turn their backs, or are oblivious to censorship, escalating drug use, rules violations and other deliberate or accidental indiscretions of the athletes, sponsors, governments and other institutions engaging in the quadrennial gagfest of human self-indulgence and narcicism the Olympics have become.

Throw in the increased (you mean they have MORE?), suffocating security after the latest terrorist acts of Muslim separatists in Xinjiang and the recipe for a less-than-inspirational spectator experience, whether you’re there or watching on TV, is less than alluring- unless you’re watching to see what gets blown up or who gets disqualified for doping which you probably won’t see anyway because the IOC, NBC and the Chinese government won’t let you.

But these are just additional reasons why I’m boycotting the Games. Tibet, Bush’s economic and human rights policies and the fact that I just have a lot of better things to do are also the reason I won’t watch them. But you can bet I’ll be following them. Even if my web search for “Tibet” turns up a blank page.

Thousands of crazed citizens fought and stampeded, barricades destroyed, soldiers beat up and expelled news media from the designated media zones. Another Tibet protest? No- it was the first day the final batch of Olympic event tickets went on sale in Beijing. But the authorities handled the situation- which they obviously helped create by not correctly handling the crowd correctly- with the same tact and restraint they handle every other public security crisis: first, get the cameras and reporters out of there. Soldiers dragged them out of the media zones the government had established for news people.

But as the Chinese authorities are finding out, muzzling the news media is not as easy as they would like. The promises the Chinese made to the IOC and international media to allow unprecedented access to the country appear to be in serous jeopardy if not already blown to bits. That doesn’t bode well for this or future Olympics where freedom, peace, love and unity are SUPPOSED to be the idea behind the whole Games.

But as the ticket riot and relentless censorship prove, the Beijing Olympics are all about money, power, and propaganda.

I’ll admit allowing protests of any type in China, especially during the Olympics, is a real change for the Chinese government. But that’s what their designated “protest zones” are for. And you can bet that as soon as the Olympics are over, authorities will scan the videotape of those zones and round up anyone they saw protesting. More evidence that the Chinese government will do their best to make sure they look like they’re friendly and  love everybody until it doesn’t serve their purposes anymore. Then- time to resume the oppression and violence.

Don’t forget through all the Olympic hoopla that NBC, the American network covering the Games, is owned by General Electric, a company with billions invested in China. While the network claims it wants to cover any news that takes place in China during the Games- like bus bombings, protests and other controversial subjects- it more than likely will cooperate fully with the Chinese propagandists and censors. Microsoft, Google and other Americans have all kowtowed to the Dragon when the topic was money and NBC is certainly not going to risk getting its cables cut from the Bird’s Nest to show someone waving a Tibetan flag.

My older brother has lived in China, mostly Beijing, off and on for more than twenty years. He loves it. But he’s back in the U.S. right now. He didn’t want to be there during the Olympics. Turns out the feeling’s mutual. China’s attitude toward the foreigners who helped build their backwards, Third World craphole into a economic juggernaut/craphole has soured over the past few months. Too much reporting on Chinese oppression in Tibet and other regions, arrests of dissidents, too much pressure over the Olympics and China’s overwhelming environmental problems and other bad karma have torn the smiley face mask off The Dragon to show the world what they really are.

But come on. Did we really buy all that hooey about global peace, shared experience and all the stuff the Olympics are SUPPOSED to stand for coming from the most oppressive nation on Earth? To the Chinese, the Olympics have always been about what THEY’RE ABOUT: money and power… and oppression. And as we get closer to the Beijing Games, we see the reality. And it’s even uglier than we thought.

News that the air in Beijing fails to meet international health standards six out of seven days is no surprise. But the worst pollution coming out of Beijing and the Olympic “community” is that this is OK and, yes, they’ve got a little air problem but doesn’t everybody? As much as fans would like to think that the Beijing Festival of Self-Aggrandizement should be above politics, above judgment and above all, above scrutiny, it’s not. There’s nothing in the world that will make me watch it on TV or stop using their keyword as a way to publicize their corruption and threat to the most important community: the world community.

Just days after the Dalai Lama reiterated his support for the Beijing Olympics and condemned the violent protests against China’s brutal rule in Tibet, the Chinese have suffered another “senior moment” asking him to unequivocally and publicly promise, blah, blah, blah. When people who do nothing but break their promises, steal everything you’ve got then kick you in the ass when they’re done keep doing it, what kind of response are you supposed to give them? And when they don’t hear you when you do say what they want, are they really listening at all?

The Chinese don’t really care about Tibet, of course other than to maintain their oppression and eradication plan. Their “dialogue” with the Dalai Lama is done to keep the world off its back until the Olympics are over and they can just ignore us again like the past fifty years. It’s hard to tell sometimes whether the Chinese government is run by barbarians, businessmen- or Bush. BTW: anyone seen Cheney lately?