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Keller @ Large: Both Sides Of Boston 2024 Olympics Debate Need To Grow Up

BOSTON (CBS) - The battle over whether or not to bring the 2024 Summer Olympic Games to Boston has taken a nasty turn.

Critics of the effort to host the games on social media have been down in the gutter for awhile, in part because social media always seems to bring out the worst in human nature. And Tuesday one of the overpaid consultants larding the Boston 2024 payroll got down there with them by hurling invective at the lead group of critics for not disclosing their own donors, as if there were some equivalency between the resources and motives of the two groups.

Both sides would do well to pull back and grow up.

Opponents of a Boston games are mostly asking the right questions: what, exactly is the game plan? What are the risks of public financial exposure and social displacement raised by that plan? And how can the International Olympic Committee, which will be calling all the shots if they choose us as the Olympic city, be trusted to give a damn about the people of Boston when their track record suggests they really don't give a damn about much except the prestige and profitability of their event?

But the critics go off the rails when they gratuitously trash the motivations of the local Olympic bid organizers. They are trying to do something they think is right for the region they live in. Casting them without evidence as rapacious robber-barons makes fools of the name-callers.

As for the Olympic boosters, it's put-up or shut-up time. They have six months left to produce a real plan for how we'll handle the games, not the fake plan they foisted on the US Olympic Committee.

Once they do that, if they can, a real grown-up debate about bringing the games here can begin. If, that is, there are enough grown-ups left to engage in it.

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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