Let people choose for themselves.
No one knows how hard it is. No one knows what we’re doing every day and what the challenges are. We were invisible basically, except portrayed as children who wouldn’t do what the president wanted to have done. But it was our lives, not his.
The above quote is from Anita DeFrantz, who was on the U.S. Olympic rowing team for the 1980 Olympics, which were held in Moscow. She didn’t get to go, nor did the other athletes, because of President Jimmy Carter’s boycott of the Olympics. The quote is on an eleven minute video put out by the Washington Post on July 16, 2020. You can tell from the quote above, and from DeFrantz’s tone, that she is still bitter about Carter having made her decision for her.
In the narrative that accompanies the video is this segment from DeFrantz:
I finally asked the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, David Jones … “Can you tell me that one human life will be saved if we don’t go to Moscow?” He thought about it and said, “No.” That was the bottom line for me: If we can’t save one person, why are we doing this?
As fate would have it, Cutler, who was then attorney for the president, invited me to come back with him to the White House to have another discussion. … We sat and we talked back and forth. He finally said, “Anita, isn’t there something you can feel in your gut when something is wrong?” I said: “Absolutely. I most certainly have that feeling right now.”
Good for her.
One of the easiest things for politicians to do is make decisions that dash people’s dreams but have very little effect on the politicians’ lives. Carter’s decision was one such.
I followed the issue in 1980 and at the time I thought that Carter had literally prevented the athletes from going to Moscow. But his chief domestic policy advisor, Stuart Eizenstat, says that’s not true. In the narrative, Eizenstat says:
And third, he realized that the U.S. government didn’t have full control over whether we participated as a U.S. team in the Olympics. That was ultimately up to the U.S. Olympic Committee, which is a totally separate independent body from the U.S. government.
So Vice-President Walter Mondale went to a USOC meeting in Colorado Springs to make Carter’s case. The vote, by secret ballot, was 1,604 to 798 for the boycott. Did Mondale or Carter make threats? I don’t know and we may never know. (DeFrantz, by the way, says that what cinched it for Carter was former Ford administration Treasury Secretary Bill Simon’s speech in which he said that the USOC should do what the president wanted.)
All of that makes refreshing, to me at least, what President Biden is considering regarding a boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. This is from Associated Press, “President Joe Biden says U.S. ‘considering’ diplomatic boycott of 2022 Beijing Olympics,” November 18, 2021.
President Joe Biden said Thursday that the United States was considering a diplomatic boycott of next year’s Winter Olympics in Beijing over China’s human rights abuses, a move that would keep American dignitaries, but not athletes, from the Games.
If Biden doesn’t want to send government officials, at our expense, to the games, that’s great. But let the athletes make their own decisions. And it looks as if he plans to do just that. Score one for Biden.
Actually, in her 66-page oral history, DeFrantz made the point more eloquently back in 1980:
I think the real turning point was when someone from a magazine called and stated, “President Carter said, ‘We won’t be going to Moscow’.” I shot back, “We? What do you mean ‘we?’ Where was ‘we’ when I was training all year in the cold and freezing my butt off?” I went on to say, “There’s not one penny of federal money that goes into training. It is a private enterprise and I, as a private citizen, have the right to decide.”
The pic at the top is of Anita DeFrantz.
READER COMMENTS
Alan Goldhammer
Nov 30 2021 at 8:04pm
I don’t get the headline of this blog post. David writes about bad and good Olympic boycotts but focuses only on the 1980 games (66 other countries boycotted those games so the US was not alone!). The Communist block countries retaliated in 1984 and boycotted the Los Angeles summer games. What about the decision to keep the two Jewish sprinters, Sammy Stoller and Marty Glickman from participating in the Berlin Olympics, a decision made by the USOC leadership? A pretty convincing case could have been made for a US boycott of those Olympic Games. Would this be a ‘good’ boycott? Was the boycott by 22 African nations of the 1972 Olumpics because of a New Zealand rugby tour of South Africa a ‘good’ boycott? IMO, the athletes from African countries who compete in running events have much more to gain than a single rower from America.
The Olympic games have been corrupt from the beginning with faux amateurism (Jim Thorpe losing his two gold medals because he had played in some professional baseball games) and high politics. Athletes were paid under the table for a lot of years before the ‘amateur’ requirement was dropped beginning in the 1980s (skiers would always hold their skis up at the end of races so their maker’s logo was visible to the TV cameras; they received payments for wearing the skis)
The highlight of political hypocrisy for me was the dismissal of sprinters John Carlos and Tommie Smith from the 1968 team following their Gold Medal ceremony raising of clenched, gloved, fists.
While the boycott of the Olympics was a disappointment for Ms. DeFrantz and the over 400 other athletes who made the US team in various sports, she did win a medal in the 1976 games (women’s eights) and served in various capacities on the IOC.
David Henderson
Dec 1 2021 at 10:24am
You wrote:
The point is that the 1980 boycott was bad because the U.S. government lobbied for it and I suspect, but cannot show, that it leaned on people behind the scenes with vague threats of retribution. Biden’s boycott, by contrast, if it happens, would be good because they’re not making decisions for others.
nobody.really
Nov 30 2021 at 9:29pm
I’m persuaded! And while we’re at it, shall we all go live in Henderson’s house? Let the people choose for themselves. Sure, the people don’t own Henderson’s house. They may have never contributed a nickel toward maintaining Henderson’s house. But so long as the people have an overweening sense of entitlement, what else matters?
As far as I know, the International Olympic Committee is a private club. Members of the club may profess certain values–but as far as I know, they are free to flout those values as they choose. In the United States, people who disapprove of the choices of that club are free to remonstrate to them, as they are free to remonstrate to anyone else. But, barring some legal claims, that’s pretty much the limits of their remedies.
Of course I’m happy to see athletes compete. But athletes are not ENTITLED to a chance to compete at the Olympics. That’s a privilege–a dream. A rower is entitled to row–and even then, only entitled to row on her own body of water. A rower is not entitled to row at any specific event, unless the rower organizes the event herself.
Of course, I’m also happy to see people fulfill their dreams. For example, I was happy to see Nelson Mandela fulfill his dream of getting out of prison. And if his dream came at the expense of the dreams of athletes whose ambitions were thwarted by the long athletic boycott of South Africa, well, so be it. Perhaps I just lack Henderson’s sense of compassion.
nobody.really
Dec 1 2021 at 3:52am
That was needlessly snide. Apologies to Henderson; I plead caffeine.
David Henderson
Dec 1 2021 at 10:25am
I accept your apology.
Jon Murphy
Dec 1 2021 at 6:56am
I don’t understand what your point is here.
Knut P. Heen
Dec 1 2021 at 5:52am
The point of sports was originally to spread peace through peaceful contest. Boycotts of sport events are causing frictions and are thus counterproductive to the mission of sports. The same goes for all politicization of sports. It is important to keep some zones apolitical to spread peaceful interaction among people.
Matthias
Dec 1 2021 at 7:36am
Are you sure that was the original point of sports? When?
Someone can just as well claim that the original point of sports was too keep the population fit and in fighting shape for the next war. Eg that’s what Britain’s bow and arrow practice was for. (A great sport, by the way.)
Knut P. Heen
Dec 1 2021 at 11:39am
I am not sure, but the idea is connected to Pierre de Coubertin who is associated with the revival of the Olympics during the late 1800s. Coubertin claimed that the original Olympics in ancient Greece lead to peace. This is the reason they let out the peace doves at the opening ceremony of the Olympic games.
I think sports may have had a strong signalling effect. Look how strong our guys are, don’t mess with us. We see this among animals too. They play to establish a pecking order.
Matthias
Dec 1 2021 at 7:33am
How about a clear separation of state and entertainment like the Olympics?
(That’s especially important when hosting the Olympics. That’s always a money drain.)
Alan Goldhammer
Dec 1 2021 at 8:06am
The only organization more corrupt than the IOC is FIFA who rule world soccer. Russia got the 2018 World Cup through bribery as did Qatar (who were never accused of being a great soccer power) for next winter. Qatar have build arenas using what can be kindly termed slave labor with several thousand fatalities among the workers. FIFA had to move the schedule for the tournament to December because of the high temperatures during the normal month of competition (June).
Pretty much all sports are corrupt at one level or another. Taxpayers routinely get fleeced as communities build sports stadiums/arenas that seldom end up profitable. The only Olympic Games to turn a profit in recent history were the LA games of 1984 where they did not have to build many new venues. South Africa built stadiums for the 2010 World Cup that went unused following the tournament. As Kurt Vonegut famously said, “…and so it goes…”
Jon Murphy
Dec 1 2021 at 8:35am
And even that may just be because they’re global in scale. The NCAA is extraordinarily corrupt, too.
robc
Dec 1 2021 at 4:08pm
Formula 1 may be worse than both.
David Henderson
Dec 1 2021 at 10:26am
You wrote:
I agree. That would be nice.
Alan Goldhammer
Dec 1 2021 at 11:29am
Unfortunately, the government has to intrude as we well know from the recent sexual abuse of female gymnasts that took place within the Olympic program.
David Henderson
Dec 1 2021 at 12:41pm
You write:
True, but I trust that you see the difference between that kind of intrusion and the kind I’m talking about here. To take another example to illustrate the point, I believe in separation of church and state. But that does NOT mean that the government should turn a blind eye to priests who molest young boys.
Matthias
Dec 2 2021 at 6:31am
Priest should be subject to the same laws as everyone else.
Though from what I’ve heard, it’s not even clear whether Priest differ statistically from the rest of the population in terms of how many abusers are amongst them. There are definitely quite a lot of priests in total, and any case makes for attention grabbing journalism.
Yaakov Schatz
Dec 1 2021 at 4:02pm
Thank you for this post. I totally agree. People should decide on their own what to boycott.
Comments are closed.