One world, one dream. It’s a lovely idea – the sort of vague, noble sentiment you might expect to have heard from Martin Luther King or Gandhi. But maybe not from a country with a recent history of totalitarianism and authoritarianism.
Apart from sounding quite a lot like something Freddie Mercury once sang, the official slogan for the Beijing Olympics was a bit cynical when you consider China’s treatment of Tibet and some of the less savoury incidents in its not-too-distant past (Tiananmen Square, anyone?). You have to ask yourself exactly what the ‘one dream’ we have apparently been subscribed to is.
Of course, it could all be very innocent. China could have been truly committed to world unity through the media of curling and javelin-throwing. It’s just hard not to read a subtext into it. Imagine the outcry if Germany hosted the Games and used the same slogan; it would be unthinkable. Yet for all the condemnation of the Chinese regime’s human rights’ abuses, no-one seems to have picked up on the possible undertones of the phrase.
However, objections to the slogan aside, it did have the very welcome effect of implanting an image in my head of IOC officials air-guitaring wildly to One Vision, presumably with a drug-crazed Dwain Chambers taking up Mercury’s mantle. Which pretty much makes it the best Olympic slogan ever. That’s alright, then.
