Word: lavishness
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...SLOC and the IOC members targeted--many from Africa and South America--are mere scapegoats. In fact, there was nothing particularly extraordinary about the lavish treatment the IOC members received from Salt Lake City. In recent weeks, reports have surfaced detailing hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts from other host cities. Sydney officials have acknowledged paying two African members $70,000 the night before the IOC voted to award the 2000 Summer Games to Sydney--a bid it won over Beijing by a mere two votes. (Sydney officials have remained defiantly unapologetic in the wake of the revelations...
...ultimate blame must rest with IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch, who has long ignored rumored improprieties, failed to enforce conflict-of-interest guidelines and through his own example fostered a bid system built on bribes and lavish gifts. Samaranch, who receives no salary from the IOC, has admitted that his extravagant lifestyle, one rivaled only by heads of state, costs the IOC, benefactors and host cities hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. (Others place estimates in the millions.) Samaranch has defended those gifts, saying they do not constitute a conflict of interest because he lacks a vote in selecting...
...Jeep Grand Cherokee in the mid-1980s. And it suggests that the old model developed by General Motors' Alfred P. Sloan in the early 1920s, which sliced the industry into carefully graded segments and moved consumers up as their income rose, may be headed for extinction. Instead, as automakers lavish more and more attention on a narrower, wealthier band of consumer, the U.S. is moving to a more European marketing model built around sales of luxury cars to the affluent and small, inexpensive shoeboxes on wheels for everyone else...
I.O.C. membership has long been a sweet deal. Its 115 members don't get paid and now must refuse gifts valued in excess of $150. But they are among the most courted humans on the planet, allowed to accept first-class plane tickets, accommodations in five-star hotels and lavish dinners from bidding cities. Salt Lake City may have taken things a step further...
...Hanks relaxes in a comfortable but not lavish silver Airstream trailer. (Of another star's trailer, he jokes, "John Travolta's is sorta like the Ritz Carlton. I wouldn't ever want to leave.") His real home--with his wife, actress Rita Wilson, and their two kids--is in west L.A., down the road from Spielberg's. But the star hasn't forgotten his dark roots. "Tom came from a hard place, and he remembers that," says Brian Grazer, producer of Splash and Apollo 13. The two men used to live near each other in a gated community...