No Olympics for You, Baku

Here's a shocker: Azerbaijan was not awarded the 2016 Olympics.That just goes to show that, even when it comes to the Olympic Committee, bribery and graft can get you only so far (Sochi demonstrates, however, that it can get you pretty far).

The participants in an Azerbaijan listserve we read do their best to boost Azerbaijan's chances for winning the lifetime achievement award for ridiculous conspiracy theory development, however. A few weeks back, after Forbes.com placed oil-soaked Baku at the top of list of the World's Most Polluted Cities, speculation on the listserve (populated, let me point out, by the intelligentsia), raged that Chicago's Olympic Committee -- clearly afraid of the competition presented by Baku -- was behind this unjust ranking.

That line of argument carried on only until someone else pointed out that Yerevan is polluted too but no one ever talks about it, taking the debate in a much more predictable direction.

Comments

[jtapp]

Hehe.