Looking in on Salt Lake

February 11, 2002 9:30 a.m.

hall we begin with a few Olympic notes? More specifically, a few Olympic-opening-ceremony notes? We may end with them too.

After our recent brouhaha about honorifics — a piece followed by many reader comments — I was amused to see that the IOC president was introduced repeatedly, and invariably, as “Dr. Jacques Rogge.” And where might that title come from? I wondered. Turns out that Rogge was trained as an orthopedic surgeon and has lectured on sports medicine. But if you were president of the International Olympic Committee — one of the greatest jobs on the planet, I’ve always thought — would you want to be known as “Dr.”? What a comedown, compared with IOC prez. But such is the tenacity of that honorific.

You may ask — so I’ll save you a little time — why I’m so dew-eyed about the presidency of the IOC, which is a job, of course, soaked in politics and other dark arts. (Perhaps we can call the IOC, post-Samaranch, a Rogge state.) Well, the Olympics captured me early. They involved so many of the things I loved: sports, languages, cultures, diplomacy, interesting people — and, of course, politics, to which I don’t have exactly an aversion, as some may have noticed.

Okay then, Dr. Jacques.

Toward the beginning of the opening ceremony — ceremonies, whatever — there was a little parade of skaters bearing flags with the names of all the cities and towns in which the Winter Olympics have been held. Among those flags was that for Garmisch-Partenkirchen, 1936. Not many people know or remember that the Winter Olympics that year were Nazi Olympics, too — they only remember the Summer Olympics in Berlin, perhaps because of Jesse Owens’s triumphs.

But the Winter Games were extremely important for Hitler — perhaps more important, because they came first. (The Games had been awarded to Germany before the rise of Hitler.) It is a startling fact of history that there was no snow in Garmisch until the very last second. Indeed, it had seemed that the Games would have to be moved to France, of all humiliations (for Hitler). But on the eve of the Olympics there was a blizzard, which suggested that the Nazis had Providence on their side. The Games were a huge success for them, enormously enhancing the sense of the regime’s legitimacy in Europe.

I learned this, and other things, from a superb book, Hitler’s Games, by Duff Hart-Davis (a book I used for a piece crying against the awarding of the 2008 Games to Red China).

I suppose that the Salt Lake folk had to include little Garmisch in that parade — but, when I saw the name, my blood ran cold.

I think I’m going to have to start a “‘Torino’ Watch.” If there’s one thing I can contribute in life, it’s to get Americans and other English-speakers to say “Turin,” instead of “Torino.” Katie Couric said “Torino” when referring to the city in which the 2006 Winter Games are to be held.

It’s “Turin,” damn it, just as it’s “Milan,” and not “Milano,” “Florence,” and not “Firenze,” “Rome,” and not “Roma,” “Genoa,” and not “Genova,” “Naples,” and not “Napoli,” “Pisa,” and not . . . okay, that one’s “Pisa.”

Look, we have perfectly good English names and pronunciations for these cities, and it is sheer affectation — and wrong, when speaking English — to use the Italian names. Only a fool or a fop would say “Venezia” instead of “Venice.” (I’d forgotten one — sorry.) And I’m afraid that if we don’t nip this Couric/“Torino” business in the bud, it’ll spread like weeds, and people will be afraid to say “Turin,” browbeaten into a name they have no business uttering.

If “Torino” should win out over “Turin,” I will be shrouded in sadness.

Katie — it’s hard to refer to her other than by her first name — also said “on line,” as in people standing in line. It is a queer fact that New Yorkers are the only Americans — and, as far as I know, the only English-speakers — to say “on line” instead of “in line.” I remember when I was young, in my hometown of Ann Arbor, standing in line at Borders (the original Borders, as it happens). Someone said (to someone else), “Are you on line?” And someone else said, “Ah, there’s a New Yorker.”

And when I moved to New York, many years later, I discovered that people here do, indeed, say “on line.” So strange. Katie Couric may work in New York now, but she’s from Virginia and should really resist succumbing to “on line” (which will always strike my Michigan heart, and tongue, as wrong).

Here’s something amusing (to me) in this connection: When my sister moved back to the United States after many years of living abroad, it was to New York (City). And she said to me one day, “Did people start saying ‘on line’ while I was gone?”

Still on language — and politics: It burns me every time I see the name “Chinese Taipei,” which is the name imposed on the Republic of China, or Taiwan, by the International Olympic Committee. When the Reds were let into the Games, they demanded that the ROC be excluded (they always do that — they won’t join anything until Taiwan is kicked out). The compromise that was arrived at was that the island republic would be referred to by the absurd name “Chinese Taipei.”

Frankly, I think — if “Republic of China” is unacceptable — that they should be known as “Democratic China,” which happens to be true.

“Asian values,” my a**.

How ’bout that Mitt Romney? Smooth fellow, isn’t he? It looked like he just might beat Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts in ’94, when Romney was the Republican senatorial nominee. That was about the worst year the Democrats ever had, and Romney was an able candidate. Teddy was genuinely vulnerable. But then, at the last second, Kennedy and the Democrats played the Mormon card — they reminded the state that Romney was a Mormon, and Kennedy said that the Mormons were just beastly about blacks and women and other important people. It was a slimy, rotten thing to do — and, of course, no one called him on it, except for a few of us -wingers, because the media are protective of Kennedy and Mormons are one minority group they have no interest in standing up for.

So Kennedy got away with it, and it was, again, lousy — a rotten thing from a rotten man, I don’t care what George W. says. Or the people in his Crawford coffee shop.

By the way, I once questioned Sen. Hatch about his friendship with Kennedy. I mentioned what he’d done to Romney, and, by extension, to all Mormons. Orrin got a flash in his eye and said, “Oh, I talked to him about that.”

Fat lot of good it must have done, though.

By the way (once more): What’s up with Mitt Romney’s home state? I mean, his dad, George, was governor of Michigan. He himself was a candidate in Massachusetts. Now he’s a Utahan — where it’s not public death to be Mormon.

He has more home states than the first President Bush. (One nice line from the ’88 presidential campaign: “Good to be in one of my home states. Hit another one Wednesday, too.” )

I’m not sure how far away George W. was from the athletes in the Parade of Nations, or Parade of Athletes, or whatever it’s called. But a) I wish he had stood for them, and b) I wish he had waved extra cheerfully and enthusiastically at athletes from evil states, like Iran. Bob Costas pointed out that Bush was “stone-faced” as the Iranian participants passed.

There was a nice moment in 1996, at Atlanta, when the Iranian athletes had been forbidden to look at the American president as they went by. But he saluted them, as I remember, and one of the Iranians — the flag-bearer, I believe — looked.

I thought that was a magnificent human moment — and I always wondered what happened to that young man.

The Iranian people, of course, adore America (or are said to). It’s their mephitic mullahs who earn a spot in the Axis of Evil.

Did you see John Glenn, doing his American-hero thing at the opening ceremony? Still looks good — always has, always will, I’m sure. I’ve always wanted to like him, mainly for Right Stuff reasons, but also because I’m always looking for a Democrat to admire, or at least not choke on. But he ended his public career absolutely disgracefully: by baldly obstructing the Senate investigation into White House campaign-finance misdeeds. He was supposed to be an American hero, but he behaved like the worst partisan hack — I can’t imagine Bob Torricelli being as bad, and he didn’t rocket around the earth or appear on Name That Tune or attract Tom Wolfe’s attention or anything.

Did Glenn pull this in order to win permission to go back into space, on the shuttle? Many people suspected so. When I asked Sen. Fred Thompson, the chairman of the relevant committee, about this, he just rocked back and said (something close to), “That’s between John and his Maker. I have my suspicions, though.”

May I suggest that maybe — just maybe — the palefaces overdo the “native” bit just a little on these big national and international occasions? I realize that these Olympics are out West, but . . . come on. Enough is enough. Obeisance, yes (or maybe), overkill, no. (Of course, American Indians, and others, might retort that the Indians were overkilled, originally.) The United States is the country that has to do with 1776, Betsy Ross, wooden teeth, Amerigo Vespucci, and all that stuff.

And incidentally, every time I hear “Native American,” I want to say, “Hey, I was born in Ypsilanti, Michigan. What am I a native of? Bali?” But I just keep my mouth shut (most of the time). (About half the time.) (Okay, almost never, get off my back.)

Oh, what a treat to see Peggy Fleming, a beauty from my childhood, still an ideal. And then there was Dorothy Hamill from Innsbruck, 1976. I was mad about her. Besotted. I confided this to a friend recently, and she said, “I liked her too. Then again, I was a ten-year-old girl. Did you use her haircut-inspired Short & Sassy strawberry-fresh creme rinse?”

Mary Lou Retton — I guess I’m on Olympic cuties here — actually had to do with my becoming a raging American patriot, or a reflexive America defender (on many matters). I was a student abroad during the ’84 Olympics, and some Americans I was with were terribly embarrassed about the downhome West Virginian Mary Lou. (I have an explanatory essay on this, here, if you like.)

And it was a joy to hear the voice of Jim McKay (I’m off the girls now). He seemed somewhat infirm — perhaps just nervous — and some may claim that it was a disservice to put him in the booth. But he is the Voice of the Olympics, for the likes of me, and always will be. It’s hard to imagine an Olympics without him, just as it’s hard to imagine a British Open without him. I love the guy, and simply hearing that voice gave me pangs — filled me with a bittersweetness that was really rather uncomfortable.

Last, speaking of uncomfortable: I’d like to say about Yo-Yo Ma’s duet with Sting . . . well, I’m not sure what I can say, in fewer than 5,000 words. I am no foe of crossovering — I’ve defended it many times, and in many ways — but Ma displays quite enough of the pop mentality in his non-pop playing. Ma with Sting was possibly the most painful thing I have witnessed since Luciano Pavarotti sang a duetized version of “Nessun dorma” with Michael Bolton on the Letterman show. As my friend and ex-colleague Cris (sic) Rapp used to write on galleys (often mine): Ugh.