Chicagoans for Rio! is the Fox-Chicago Channel 12 WFLD-TV’s execrable, damnable minute and four seconds that — heavens to Betsy! — portrays a web site that argues against and provides testimonials against Chicago 2016 Olympics.
Horrors! Disloyal! Woefully outside the box! Clearly a case of The Enemy of the People arising in our midst.
Just so you can judge for yourself how horrible and disloyal, the site is Chicagoans for Rio 2016, which says
It would be exciting to host the Olympics here in Chicago. But you know what be even better? Rio de Janeiro. Just let Rio host the 2016 Olympics. We don’t mind. Honest.
Second City vs. Marvelous City. Go marvelous!
And for a capsule commentary that sums the Rio First concept, look to Larry Horist’s letter in Sun-Times:
First and foremost, all those businesslike economic projections flowing out of City Hall and the Chicago boosters are fabrications, theories. . . . Should we get the Olympics, the costs will be higher than projected and the income lower. The promised ancillary benefits will never materialize. The [deleterious] impact on the working-class taxpayer will be significant.
. . . . [V]irtually every independent accounting authority says the city’s projections are nothing but hype. Even the promised insurance policy that is supposed to protect the taxpayers is full of holes — billions of dollars in costs will come out of Chicago workers’ paychecks. Our hard-earned money will be redistributed to the rich and powerful friends of City Hall.
In the twisted irony of Chicago politics, those who will scoop up millions of dollars in windfall profits will have the best accommodations, the best seats, the best parties. The working-stiff footing the bill will watch the hometown Olympics on television, find it impossible to get into a restaurant, stand in long lines for entertainment venues and have to make their way to work in super congestion. I say: Go! Go! Rio! [Italics added]
Oh, and by the bye and FYI, Drudge has it that the Chicago Olympic Committee said don’t run that minute and four seconds clip, because
its broadcast “would harm Chicago’s chances” to be awarded the games.
The station’s news director ordered staff to hold fire after the report aired once last Thursday morning, claims a source.
The committee is right: the Go Rio movement would hurt their project.
Blithe Spirit 