Beating death of Chicago honor roll student proves Americans do not deserve to host 2016 Olympics

September 28, 11:03 PMPost-Partisan ExaminerD.K. Jamaal

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Derrion Albert's alleged killers. This week's face of America.

This week, the President and First Lady of the United States of America will travel to Denmark to lobby the International Olympic Committee to bring the 2016 Olympics to their hometown, Chicago.

Obama naysayers will no doubt criticize this as a poor use of Presidential power, prestige and time. With the war in Aghanistan on the verge of shambles, the endless war in Iraq still raging, rising unemployment and ongoing recession, and the burgeoning Iran crisis – not to mention the battles over health care and energy reform – Obama should be too busy to worry about sporting games, right?

For Obama, though, the decision is a no brainer. If the President’s Olympic mission fails, the importance of the aforementioned issues will ensure that everyone quickly forgets Obama’s foray into the sports world.

If Obama succeeds, the corporate pro-Obama media will go nuts crediting him for bringing the Olympics back to the US for the first time in a generation (by 2016, it will have been 20 years since The ATL hosted) – and give an economic and infrastructural boost to his beloved Chicago. He could use a couple days good publicity before the aforementioned controversies take back the airwaves.

The question, then, is not whether Obama’s Olympic lobbying is a good use of Presidential time, but whether Chicago, USA is a good use of the Olympics in the first place -- especially in light of how harshly many Americans judged the IOC for awarding the Olympics to China despite its pitiful human rights record.

It is fitting that the White House released news of Obama’s excellent Olympic adventure on the same day that Americans all over the country reacted with outrage to video of Derrion Albert's beating death. Albert, a 16 year old sophomore honors student at Chicago’s Christian Fenger Academy High School, was attacked by a group of Chicago gang members after wandering upon a fight. The graphic video shows him being hit by a two-by-four and his skull being stomped, as he lay helpless on the ground.

The word tragic does not begin to do justice to Derrion Albert’s death. Barbaric, unconscionable, and intolerable come to mind, as do other unfortunately unprintable words that aptly describe his killers.

If this were an isolated incident, it would be easy to claim Derrion’s death represents only Chicago at its ugliest and move on, because it is true that Derrion Albert’s murderer does not represent America.

However, Derrion Albert’s murder does reflect the dark heart of individual Americans: bloodthirtsty, selfish, and violent. Always, always, always violent.

America is a great nation -- the world's greatest. America says that every person has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. However, Americans are a people that cannot have an honest conversation about the rights of unborn children. Americans are a people that say with their mouths they are pro-life, and then kill abortion doctors. Americans are a people with sitting Supreme Court justices who argue it's legal for the government to kill even those who can prove their innocence. Americans are a people who call themselves Christian while fighting to remain the only civilized Western nation clinging to capital punishment, even killing innocent people like Cameron Todd Willingham, executed in Texas in 2004 for a crime everybody now knows he did not commit.

Do these Americans look like gracious Olympic hosts?

America says that we the people should promote the general welfare. However, Americans cannot find a way to provide quality, affordable health care to its neediest. Americans elected a President who will not fight for a voluntary, optional public insurance plan to offer relief to needy people neglected and abused by private insurers. Instead, America's president offers lip service to health care reform while thwarting reform in secret, making backroom deals with heath industry lobbyists to protect the profits of big pharmaceuticals and deny Americans the opportunity to buy cheaper drugs from overseas.

Are these the Americans who deserve to host the 2016 Olympics?

Americans are a death-and-race-obsessed, criminally prudish, sexually repressed and hypocritical people. Americans sit silent while the black kids attack the white kid on the bus for being white and attack the white boyfriend for having a black girlfriend. Americans will not allow realistic sex on their movie screens, but we will invite graphic scenes of mayhem, murder, and misogynistic violence into our homes on a nightly basis.

Will the Washington Post, who today offered a truly revolting defense of Roman Polanski's crime of drugging, raping, and sodomizing a child, defend Derrion Albert? Does America’s increasingly useles, biased, oblivious, race-baiting punditocracy deserve front row coverage of the Olympics?

Americans' avarice and refusal to save or sacrifice caused the worldwide economic crisis. Yet the Wall Street-Washington corporate oligarchy is stronger than ever and still playing fast and loose with America's financial health. While Obama traipses around the world genuflecting and blaming Bush for everything from war to the spoiled milk in Mrs. O’Malley’s frige, reports continue to surface that the rampant Bush-era greed that ushered in economic collapse continues not only unabated, but also strengthened under his own weak hand, offering limitless bailouts rather than strong regulatory change.

The IOC ought to respond to Obama’s request for a Chicago Olympics with one of their own: an explanation about what he intends to do to make Chicago a livable place for young men like Derrion Albert. Since Obama's presence instantly politicizes Chicago's Olympic bid, the IOC should query Obama as to whether his policies fufill the promise of America -- or mantain the status quo greed, selfishness, and violence of Americans.

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