Word: torch
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...SMOG of international political idiocy descends upon the Los Angeles Olympics, cries have arisen that it's time to extinguish. Baron de Coubertin's torch once and for all. Such arguments strike an increasingly responsive chord, indeed, the last Games to be left unscathed by the non-athletic tug of war between rival states took place in 1968. Since then, we've seen the massacre of 11 Israelis in Munich, the African boycott of Montreal, the U.S. no-show in Moscow, and now, the big nyet from Chernenko and Co. Nor do prospects for the future look good...
...seemed a splendid idea. To the glory that was Greece, the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee (L.A.O.O.C.) wanted to bring a touch of American grandeur. The Olympic flame was to be relayed from east to west in a scenic 19,000-kilometer zigzag across all 50 states, the longest torch run in modern Olympic history. Sections of the route would be "sold" at $3,000 a kilometer to sponsors who contribute to charity. Doing it the American way, the Olympic flame would arrive from Greece electronically. AT&T, which is sponsoring the Olympic relay, set up a system...
L.A.O.O.C. officials explained that the money from the torch relay would go to worthwhile causes, including the Boys' Clubs of America and the Special Olympics (for the handicapped) and the Y.M.C.A. The Greeks were not convinced. According to Peter Ueberroth, president of the L.A.O.O.C., the Greeks saw the relay as "some kind of honky-tonk road show...
Keeping the flame lighted after it arrives on U.S. soil may be tricky. On practice runs in March, the flame kept going out. The maker of the torch has switched to a higher-grade propane, but as a precaution, a second Olympic flame will be kept burning in a lantern along the route...
...half-hearted beginning of an understanding of the way we are. Yet if Doonesbury had never been around, neither would Bloom County--for Bloom County is clearly a child of the Doonesbury era. Politically and sometimes sentimentally accurate. Bloom County makes the best stab around at carrying the Doonesbury torch. But Bloom County too often comes dangerously close of the zone between, say. Donesbury and Garfield, where it begins to remind one of Dennis the Menace. Because he has chosen child rather than adult heroes. Breathed sometimes indulges in "aren't they cutisms," which become a bit of a crutch...