Olympian obstinance

 The Tokyo Olympics kick off in less than two months, unless they don't. Sharper bettors than the Blob (and they're all sharper, frankly) must be thinking it's even money at this point.

I say this because some 80 percent of the Japanese people are clamoring to pull the plug on the Games, on account of like almost every Olympic Games ever, they're likely to be a financial black hole. Also, the Bastard Plague.

Which right now is experiencing a comeback surge in Japan, where hardly anyone has been vaccinated. It's gotten so bad the U.S. issued a Level-4 travel advisory for Japan -- which essentially means "Don't go there." And almost every major health professional in the world (including Japan) is expressing deep concern about going ahead with the Games.

Also, the other day, one of Japan's leading newspapers -- Asahi Shimbun, which is also a local sponsor of the Games -- called on Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to cancel them, joining a number of other prominent Japanese businesses.

The CEO of Rakuten, Japan's leading e-commerce company, even called the Games "a suicide mission."

So, to recap: The Japanese people, the smartest medical minds in the world. the nation's business community and even some of the sponsors are dead set against going ahead with the Tokyo Olympics. 

So who's in favor of it?

Well, the IOC of course, which would conduct the Games inside reactor No. 4 at Chernobyl if the money was right. The plan is to put the whole business in a bubble, and the host country can just shut up about it. 

"None of the folks involved in the planning and the execution of the Games is considering cancellation," IOC member Dick Pound told Selina Wang of CNN the other day. "That's essentially off the table."

Greed has always been one of the leading causes of tone deafness, and the IOC has never been any more immune to it than any other grasping corporate entity. Go back almost 50 years, for instance, and you can hear echoes of Pound's clueless words in the words of then-IOC chairman Avery Brundage, who in Munich in 1972 refused to allow even the murder of 11 Israeli athletes to interrupt the Games.

"The Games must go on," he declared.

And when did he declare this?

Why, at the memorial service for the murdered Israelis, of course. The next day, the Games did go on. No decent mourning period allowed, apparently.

No consideration, either, for the feelings of medical professionals, the citizens of the host country and even some of the sponsors 49 years later.

Some things. Never. Change.