The Olympics start this week and we’re already hearing that athletes from the USA should be addressing human rights abuses by the Chinese. I’m quite conflicted about this and wonder how others feel. Back in May I saw Lebron James say that athletes should speak out and that he planned to do so. However, this morning on ESPN Sportscenter he spoke about being just a member of the team and that they [athletes] all want to leave the politics to the politicians.

Do you suppose the Olympic Committee reminded him that the contract he agreed to as an athlete specifically prohibits political actions/statements? The bigger question here in spite of the contract is whether or not members of the American Olympic Team have any responsibility to talk about the well-documented human rights abuses in China–to say nothing of China’s support of the racial cleansing going on in Darfur.

One of the thoughts that first comes to my mind is that it’s one thing to ask an NBA multi-millionaire about human rights abuses, but is it fair to put that question to a 16, 17 or 18 year-old gymnast or swimmer? I guess I don’t think it is.

P.S. Please check out this link as a follow up to last week’s blog about social networking.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121729233758791783.html

This entry was posted on Monday, August 4th, 2008 at 3:42 pm and is filed under Current Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.