Telander Says No To Olympics

By Marcus Gilmer in News on Jun 5, 2009 7:30PM

Finally. Someone from one of the two major newspaper in town has come out as opposed to the city's 2016 Olympic bid and it happens to be one of the higher profile sports writers. Of course, we've expressed our qualms about the bid here and The Reader's Ben Joravsky has also been all over the bid and the TIF entanglement therein. But it seems with the Parking Meter Debacle continuing, Telander has had enough.

The City of Chicago, led by Mayor Daley and a vast and tumorous army of aldermen and bagmen and yesmen and opportunists and spineless, parasitic political-machine halfwits of forms never seen outside the roiling cesspool of governmental slop-trough greed, has proven itself unworthy of something as potentially delicious and fulfilling as the 2016 Olympic Games.

What Telander says is nothing that hasn't been echoed by other sources. What makes Telander's column stand out is that - with apologies and due respect to Mr. Jarovsky - it's perhaps the highest profile call against the 2016 Olympics we've seen (if we're wrong, please correct us!). Especially when a Tribune story about lower-than-expected support poll results mysteriously disappeared from the paper's website (this Philip Hersh column is the only mention of the results). Still, it's most likely too little, too late for anyone opposed to the 2016 Olympics as the organization has some very powerful support behind it. It's all in the IOC's hands now.