The Smog Games?

I can't wait til tomorrow. Some friends of ours are getting together to go watch the Americans beat Japan in soccer just down the road from here. The day after that some local friends are coming over to watch the opening ceremony.

My excitement, however, comes in spite of the valiant attempts of several Western media outlets to shower these Olympics with the worst kind of cynical reporting I have perhaps seen in my lifetime. Photographs of Beijing "smog" are broadcast daily across American televisions without one credit to those who have worked for 7 years to create dramatic improvements. Never are such photos accompanied by an actual scientific measure of pollution. Today's hit piece in the Guardian used the Chinese in-house index (which is reading safe but high at the moment)--the same index it has trashed as untrustworthy. It is clear that these media outlets care more about the health of pampered athletes living in China for a short time than they care about ordinary Chinese who breathe the very same air every day. Furthermore, reports of terror attacks in China are riddled with words like "alleged" and "claim." It is no surprise that the Chinese public accuses Western media outlets of falsifying evidence and doctoring photographs for sensational purposes. It certainly leaves me wondering and disappointed.

Despite all efforts to become a compassionate, internationalist society, the West still has a lot of snobbery to atone for.