Thursday, June 21, 2012

Olympics kerfuffle

Oh joy, another Olympics kerfuffle. Chicago's failed bid for the summer games was maddening enough. This time the USOC is going after Ravelry for the light-hearted and whimsical Ravelympics. See a Gawker article here and more info here on Ravelry. (Tip o' the hat to Tinks & Frogs, btw.)

Not only is law clerk Brett Hirsch’s phrasing poorly chosen and condescending, I am pretty peeved by the cease-and-desist part of the letter, too. As a classicist, I’m horrified by how the USOC tries to protect a “brand” created by the Greeks in 776 B.C.E. The bit about 4-year intervals is especially addle-pated — hence the Greek system of dating by olympiads.

All in the name of profits, of course, while “amateurs” compete. I'm not a huge fan of the modern Olympics in general (esp. the summer games), and you can guarantee that I'll keep the TV off this summer.

7 comments:

Rachael said...

Re the Olympics issue: Oh for heaven's sake. It'll be interesting to see what happens. Thanks for posting, I hadn't see this.

knitseashore said...

Ridiculous. Instead of having a sense of humor and realizing that Ravel*l*m*i*s encourages people to watch and support the games, the organizers have now sufficiently offended a large segment of the viewership enough that many of us will not bother to watch, much less support their franchise.

I love your Classical view. Indeed.

Chris said...

I don't find all those hours of sports to be interesting at all - give me the Tour de France any day. :)

Kirstin Anne said...

this is laughable. I really do hope that they see a dip in the viewership this year. Howrude of them! I agree with you that it is rediculous that they are claiming ownerships of something that was started by the Greeks so so long ago.It's whatever, I dont even watch the games anyway, so I surly wont be watching them this year...

Laura said...

Well said!

Katie M. said...

I hadn't seen this, either. Thanks for sharing ... a kerfuffle, indeed.

Tracy Altieri said...

Don't want to step on anyone's toes here - but this smells just like the Vatican admonishing its American nuns for spending too much time on social welfare issues. What???????