As has been widely reported, the Olympic Flame made a brief appearance in San Francisco this week. I commented earlier on this when the very lame idea of “free speech zones” was advanced by Mayor Gavin Newsome. For those of you who don’t know, the Mayor played a very public bait and switch game with the populace, both supporters and detractors of the event, suggesting that people could participate by hanging out near the waterfront and in Justin Herman Plaza for the closing ceremony. In fact, the torch disappeared and took an unpublished route to the northern end of the city under close security and near secrecy.

My knee jerk reaction to this was “sellout!” In fact, this entry was originally entitled “Gavin Newsome is a Coward.” But as I wrote the original entry I didn’t quite believe what I was writing entirely and thus decided not to write that story. I certainly do believe that people have the right to express themselves within the bounds of the law and hate to see that right obstructed. However, when looking at the events on Wednesday, people had pretty unlimited free speech to express whatever their view point might be on the subject. So, where’s the problem with what transpired?

To be fair, the Mayor spoke multiple times before the event and each time stated this is the plan, but it is subject to change even up to the last moment. It’s not like the bait and switch wasn’t advertised in advance. And, in a notoriously “leaky” city, the fact that the new route and change was kept secret is nothing short of amazing. No doubt people were disappointed that they didn’t get to see the Olympic Flame in it’s only US appearance, but they did get to express themselves and that’s the key I think.

Meanwhile, to turn to the subject of Tibet for the moment, I don’t know much about the situation there and really don’t have a position. But I do think that it would be the highest form of hypocrisy for the US to lecture any other nation on occupation and/or human rights at our present time in history; having just passed the 5 year anniversary of an illegal and immoral war, occupation, and torture campaign. That doesn’t mean that China is right on the issue, but it does mean the US isn’t qualified to criticize China on these issues – we have our own shortcomings to deal with.

A final thought on this: what was the Olympic Committee smoking when they decided to make San Francisco the one US stop for the torch? If there’s one city that would protest regardless of the hosting nation, this is it. Come on, people in the city protest rain, fog, and the tides. In fact, people protest for no reason other than it’s been a few days since the last protest. That’s part of the city’s charm. What do you expect is going to happen when a lightning rod set of issues represented by China passes through the city with national media attention? At least no one was hurt.