We Need the Distraction of These Olympics (2024)

This is part of Slate’s 2024 Olympics coverage. Read more here.

Every now and then I find myself too anxious to fall asleep. Whether I’m worried about a work deadline, fretting about the state of the world, bogged down in personal problems, or just generally anxious for no real articulable reason, the outcome is always the same: I toss and turn for what feels like hours until I become sure that sleep will never come. At that point, I will occasionally give myself what equates to a rather exasperated pep talk. Look, I’ll say. Your problems aren’t going anywhere. All of this crap will still be there in the morning, so you might as well get some rest right now and pick the anxiety back up tomorrow.

This is sort of the attitude I’ve decided to bring into the 2024 Paris Olympics. This year’s Games have the misfortune to be kicking off just as American presidential politics have taken several unusual turns. Within the past month alone, Joe Biden so badly botched a presidential debate—a debate that he insisted on holding months earlier than usual—that he was ultimately forced to abandon his reelection bid and anoint Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democrats’ “Break glass in case of emergency” candidate. On the other side of the aisle, some moron shot Donald Trump in the ear (or maybe some shrapnel hit it?), a message-board weirdo snagged Trump’s vice presidential slot, and Hulk Hogan gave a speech at the Republican National Convention.

There’s a lot of news happening, in other words, and at times it has struck me as rather irresponsible to contemplate turning away from it for two weeks in order to binge-watch and write about weird sports that nobody actually likes. What’s more, my coverage of the Olympics for Slate is sometimes pretty stupid—deliberately so, sure, and hopefully in a funny way, but stupid nevertheless. Other times, I do write about Big Olympics Issues. But I mostly like writing about the biggest jerks at the Games, speculating on what would happen if all the events took place in the dark, and hyping up that Chad guy. (Hey, Chad! Call me!) I confess that I’ve wondered whether my energies would be better spent over the next two weeks writing relevant pieces about the actual news.

On the other hand, there are already too many people writing about politics, whereas there are literally no other journalists brave enough to tell you what the best and worst jobs at the Olympics are. Meanwhile, American politics will still be on fire by the time the Olympics conclude, and the blaze won’t be any more or less intense if some of us step away for two weeks in order to get our quadrennial fix of badminton, archery, and racewalking. For Americans, the post-Olympics, preelection period will be wholly consumed by thinking, worrying, and swearing under our breath about domestic electoral politics. We deserve a preemptive vacation. It’s OK for me to lean into the distraction provided by the Paris Games—and it’s OK for you to do the exact same thing.

The Olympics never come at an optimal time. In 2022 the Winter Games kicked off right as Russia was preparing to invade Ukraine. In 2021 the Tokyo Olympics took place as the world was struggling to figure out the equity and logistics of COVID-vaccine distribution. There is always something more important than the Olympics happening somewhere in the world. But the Olympics has pole vaulting and water polo and endless displays of athletic excellence and countless small moments of beauty and grace. The Olympics are fun, and the Olympics are brief, and all the terrible and important things in the world will still be there when the Olympics are over. Life isn’t study hall. You won’t get in trouble if you neglect your responsible news consumption for a fortnight in order to geek out over sports you know nothing about.

Saying that it’s OK to be distracted by the Olympics, of course, is not at all the same thing as saying that the Olympics are OK. Indeed, there are arguably few global endeavors that are less OK than the corrupt, wasteful, recurring boondoggle that is the Olympic Games. Every time the Olympics come around, I write about how terrible they are: How, more often than not, the Games’ impact on their host cities is at best negligible and at worst actively destructive; how the sporteaucrats who supervise them can be arrogant, stupid, and self-dealing; how the Olympics are often awarded to authoritarian regimes that use them to flex their state power while whitewashing human-rights abuses. I first began covering the Olympics for Slate in 2012, and every single Games I’ve written about since has been, in its way, karmically disgusting. The fact that the Paris Olympics seem to be somewhat less overtly abominable than some other recent Games doesn’t mean that the Paris Olympics are good; it just means that their waters are slightly cleaner than Rio’s and their indignities slightly less evident than Beijing’s.

International Olympic Committee executives like to talk about how the Games promote peace, tolerance, and understanding, and how they light the world a path toward improved international harmony and cooperation. While these noble sentiments align with Pierre de Coubertin’s initial ambitions when he founded the modern Olympics more than a century ago, in practical terms they have only ever equated to empty rhetoric deployed by dullards and strongmen in order to justify their immensely destructive footprint. Literal days after IOC honcho Thomas Bach voiced these ideals at the closing ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics, Russia invaded Ukraine. So much for harmony!

The Olympic Games do not fill the role that their most fatuous promoters claim they do, and they are not a pathway to peace, love, or understanding. What they are is an excellent distraction: a ridiculous and impressive spectacle that can command the entire world’s attention all at once, even as the entire world knows that they definitely have better things to do than watch the Olympics. Yes, the Olympics are terrible in their way—but everything is terrible in its way. Yes, the Olympics are inessential, but in a world where all the “essential” things are very depressing, sometimes unnecessary things can be blessedly restorative. Yes, the election is in flux, but also, gymnastics. Yes, the president is too old, but also, the 100-meter dash. Yes, the future of democracy is at stake, but also, 3-on-3 basketball. The world’s problems aren’t going anywhere, so we should feel free to lose ourselves in these beautiful, troublesome Olympics for two weeks. All our anxieties will still be there waiting for us on Aug. 12.