You’d think that the Olympic flame would be the one thing on our planet that could withstand the heat. These days, though, the venerable torch is sweating it.
The fire it’s facing comes from the belly of protestors who would rather witness anarchy than the Beijing Games. With the demonstrators gaining attention wherever they decide to congregate, the flame has had little chance.
“I wanted to extinguish the Olympic flame with a child’s water shooter because the idea of the flame as a symbol of harmony is not valid,” protestor Isabel Losada wrote the London Telegraph on Sunday in the latest swipe at the sacred fire. She and her associates are accusing the international community of supporting China’s controversial treatment of Tibetan monks and they are champions of a multilateral boycott of the 2008 Olympiad. (We’ll talk about the Tibet situation in the coming days.)
In recent weeks, the flame has been grasped, spat at, insulted and been pissed on figuratively if not literally during the torch relay that leads up to the opening of the Summer Olympics in August.
Elevation PR says enough already. The Olympic flame needs a campaign to help its public image and we’re here to provide it. These are five reasons why no one should ever desecrate the torch:
1. Extinguishing the flame would be like bulldozing an Egyptian pyramid or turning the Galapagos Islands into a Club Med. The Olympic flame has been part of human history for 2,785 years. Respect it!
2. Forget cavemen with sticks, the true source of fire on our earth occurred when Prometheus stole the flame from Zeus. (At least that’s what the Hellenic tradition tells us.) Are you really going to want to be known as the one who put out that light?
3. The flame is an innocent bystander in the politics of man. Really, what’s it ever done? Let it glimmer and glow in peace as it gets passed around like the rumor of some track star’s steroid habit.
4. If you really want to cause a stir, forget the flame and protest flights to China. Get on the tarmac and make like a Tiananmen Square hero in front of the next Boeing you see. Then we’ll pay attention.
5. The Olympic flame’s hot. It represents glory, strength, persistence, hard work: all positive human characteristics. Snuffing it would epitomize some of our worst.
Got something to say about how the Olympic flame’s public image should be made over? Let the Elevation team know!