Brazil is in chaos and don't you wish you were there?
The Oi Rio Pro is off again and our heroes have yet another day to explore the host country Brazil. The problems there are clear and present and everywhere. The pollution was such they had to move the event site, crime is so bad that soccer star Rivaldo said, “Don’t come!” The Olympics, only eighty some days off, is in shambles and a Zika epidemic threatens the world. Amir Attaran, a lawyer at the University of Toronto, said, “The question is really — and it’s an ethical one — is it worth having the games in Rio when you could have it elsewhere or just delay your pleasure a little bit so as not to run the horrible risk of — I hate to say it — shrunken baby brains?”
But you know Mr. Attaran loved to say it! You know he’s been waiting much of his adult life to use the phrase “shrunken baby brains” in an appropriate context. And yesterday, to top everything off, President Dilma Rousseff was ousted in what she, and her supporters, called a coup. A coup! While our heroes are roaming the mean streets! I tell you this, and I tell you honestly, I am heartbroken not to be in Brazil right now. I cannot think of a more exciting place in the whole world. Do you think Nat Young appreciates the gravity of what he is witnessing? Do you think he wakes up, reads the news and then steps out with a notebook and camera? Do you think Ryan Callinan knows that he is nuzzled up to the bosom of history?
If I were in Brazil I would be getting detailed analysis of the geopolitical situation from the keen minds on tour. Davey Cathels on Brazil’s Budget Laws. Matt Wilkinson on double digit inflation. Adam Melling on new president Michael Temer’s cabinet choices. I feel it would be a big hit. I feel CNN would be given a run for its dwindling money.