Keller @ Large: Boston Olympics Not Very Appealing

BOSTON (CBS) - I admit it  - I have never been a huge fan of the Olympic Games.

With all due respect to the athletes and what they go through to make it to the Games, their struggle really doesn't crack my top ten list of moving human-interest stories. Give me a story about any given Paralympian or Special Olympian instead.

I've never been one to swoon over the international comraderie supposedly showcased by the games. Somehow, watching the appalling anti-semitism of International Olympic Committee officials in the wake of the slaughter of Israeli atheletes at the 1972 Summer Games punctured that Olympic myth for me, and the Vladimir Putin show at the Sochi games this year didn't help.

But there are well-meaning people, with and without a profit motive, who do like the Olympics and want to bring the summer Games to Boston in 2024.

However, they've run into a problem: they can't or won't issue even broad estimates of how much it will cost the taxpayers.

And Bostonians have seen their pockets picked by big public-works projects with vague price tags before. The Big Dig was supposed to cost just two billion or so, a real bargain; it wound up costing more than ten times as much.

Cambridge City Councillor Tim Toomey, part of a council majority that just voted to oppose the Boston bid, puts it well in an op-ed piece:

"Local and state governments emerge from the games saddled with debt that puts important public projects on hold, while advertisers, corporate sponsors and fat-cat members of the IOC cash in."

That doesn't sound very appealing. Good luck, Olympic boosters, putting a shine on this sneaker.

Listen to Jon's commentary:

You can listen to Keller At Large on WBZ News Radio every weekday at 7:55 a.m. You can also watch Jon on WBZ-TV News.

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