This was the world thumbing its nose -- no, flipping its middle finger -- at America. This was the world telling America what it can do with its President Obama, its Michelle Obama, its Oprah Winfrey, its belief that it simply could drop into Europe and use Hollywood dazzle to win an Olympic bid. This was the world telling America that we still don't like you enough in 2009 to back you in 2016.
And this was Chicago, city of sleazy politicians, getting a wicked taste of its own backdoor medicine. Seems the fixers got jobbed this time.
Anti-Americanism was alive and not well Friday in the Danish capital, where Chicago -- widely believed to have the most practical and safest bid -- was eliminated in the first round by International Olympic Committee voters. Not in the finals or the second round, mind you, but in the first round, which constitutes a statement just as rude and telling as the one made four years ago when New York was ousted early. Only hours after the president delivered what sounded like another campaign speech after an all-night flight, Obama was floored on Air Force One by the news that he had been outpoliticked by the more emotional, sincere and harder-working Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil. Silva pounded home the void that never has made much sense: South America hasn't hosted an Olympic Games. And with the International Olympic Committee voters in no mood to do favors for the U.S., it was a convenient time to award the Games to Rio de Janeiro , where the thong bikini was born and where a teary-eyed Pele won the game this week that a U.S. sports legend, Michael Jordan, never showed up for.
The ramifications are rippling. It's another blow for Obama, whose big talking hasn't resulted in much action on a growing number of fronts. He gambled and failed miserably in Denmark, traveling overseas and getting his butt whipped to the delight of Republicans ripping him for wasting his time in a competition in which he finished dead last. Seems there was too much Hollywood and not enough heart and substance for the voters, who liked the Obamas and Oprah as celebrities but perhaps sensed an arrogance and a lack of understanding about their precious Olympic movement. The president took a chance with a significant at-bat on the international level. Not only did he go down swinging, he got nailed in the head with a fastball.
