Atlanta, Don’t Let Games Go South

All right, Scarlett, rip down the drapes and make yourself a gown. See if you can get Rhett Butler to give a damn again. Hang the balloons in Tara’s halls. We’re going to have a cotillion again.

Tell Sherman he didn’t burn Atlanta after all--just a few boxcars. Get the sweet magnolias in bloom. Rest easy, Jeff Davis, they didn’t hang you to a sour apple tree after all.

The South is going to rise again. One hundred and twenty-six years after Sherman thought he torched it forever, Atlanta has been chosen to play host to the world. The athletes of the world, not Yankee soldiers, are going to be marching through Georgia. The biggest international festival the planet has to offer is going to be held around Peachtree Street. The world will have Georgia on its mind.

A little chorus of Dee-Eye-Ex-Eye-Ee, professor! Everybody from Hard-Hearted Hannah, the vamp of Savannah, to the ghost of Bobby Lee should rejoice. America is proud of Atlanta. It’s what we like to think we are--progressive, modern, racially harmonious, a model for the future. That’s the good news. . . .

I would like to think it’s all going to be ticker tape and confetti from here on in. But that’s not the way to bet.

You’ve got the ’96 Games, Atlanta. Dance in the streets all you want, throw the confetti, take the bows, get ready for your party.

But first. . . .

Look out for the doomsayers, the naysayers. The party poopers. They haven’t had their shot yet, but trust me, they will. They’re out there. Like John Paul Jones, they have not yet begun to fight.

You might want to take a little friendly advice from a party who has been there. For instance:

--Don’t Listen to the Radio: Sure as there’s a peach in Georgia, some loudmouth who makes more noise than sense is going to try to be a hero. He will shriek that Atlanta will go broke, the taxpayers will be living in cartons and maybe the sun won’t rise if the city fathers insist in stuffing the Games down Atlanta’s throat. It will constitute the second burning of Atlanta, he will assure his listeners, and it will make the first one look like a marshmallow roast. He will get listened to. He will have the environmental impacters on his side, the Society for Saving the Tsetse Fly and a group whose motto will be: “What do we need the Olympic Games for? We already have the Braves and the Falcons. We’ve suffered enough.”

--Don’t Return Calls to City Hall: There will be politicians who will seek to make political hay out of trying to sabotage the Olympics. They will pose as the taxpayers’ friend; they will introduce resolutions calling for the death penalty for anyone who so much as spends a nickel of city money on a lightpost banner. Do what I’d do. Tune them out. I can remember a California politician in Moscow coming up to me and confiding how worried he was over the uproar back home over the L.A. Olympics. “My God, John,” I told him, “if the city of L.A. can’t put on a track meet, we should be ashamed of ourselves. Just remember, they did it in this town in the middle of a Depression--and made a million dollars.” Just remember the ones who are screaming the loudest will be the first in line to take the bows when the Games succeed.

--Take Me to Your Leader: Don’t argue with the politicians. Just turn the running of the Games over to one man who knows what he’s doing and knows he has a valuable commodity to sell to American business. We had Peter Ueberroth. Get someone who knows marketing and knows Atlanta and can cajole a whole community into working for nothing. P.T. Barnum would be perfect.

--Cozy Up to the Soviets: See if you can keep Jimmy Carter out of sight. Lock him in the attic if necessary. Don’t let the Soviets find out he was a Georgia citizen, never mind governor. Be careful never to bring up the word boycott . That’ll be like mentioning the word shank around golfers or balk around pitchers or sack around quarterbacks or foot-fault to tennis players. You need the Soviets. Without them, you have a track meet. With them, you have World War III, I don’t care how much glasnost there is. The Soviet Union vs. the United States is Dempsey-Tunney. Everything else is two flyweights in Pacoima.

--Put a Downhold on the Chauvinism: Rooting for the old home team is as American as fudge, but it got a little out of hand in the L.A. Olympics, whipped up by television. Waving a flag is OK, but a decathlon is not the Persian Gulf. We don’t lose Bunker Hill just because someone noses us out in a kayak or an Olympic swimming pool. Sportsmanship is a dying art. Winning isn’t everything. Sex is.

--Get Ready for Flak From Abroad: In 1984, just before the L.A. Olympics, a crew from British TV came over and asked me for air time on the prospects for the Games. We weren’t two minutes into the interview before I realized they had the doomsday view of it. What about the traffic, they wanted to know. How can you cope? What about it? I told them: Look, the city of Pasadena has a million people at the Rose Parade and 105,000 at the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day. They handle it. You’re talking 90,000 in the Coliseum and 20,000 in the Sports Arena. LAPD can handle that--that’s Monday Night Football at the Coliseum, is all that is, for cryin’ out loud! What about the weather? The smog? Look, I told them, don’t worry. Whenever L.A. knows it’s going to be on national television--whether it’s a Rose Bowl or a golf tournament or an Olympic Games--it’s like an old strumpet who puts on her best face and finery and dazzles the stag lines. L.A. will be gorgeous for the Olympics. It was. I’m sure Atlanta will be, too. At 1,000 feet elevation, it may produce a few surprise records--like maybe a 29-foot long jump to threaten Bob Beamon’s Mexico City hang glide.

--Stay Home and Enjoy: One reason L.A. traffic was so light in ’84 was because so many people chickened out and took their vacations at that time. One couple who bugged out and went to Europe later told of going into a boutique in Florence to buy gloves or something, and when the clerk found out they were from L.A., she was stunned. “But the Olympics are in Los Angeles!” she protested. “We wish we could be there! Why did you leave?” Our friends ended up feeling somewhat sheepish. Not to say foolish.

These are some of the things you can look forward to.

Whatever happens, Olympic Games are to enjoy. It’s a festival of youth, a chariot of fire, a celebration of life. You get one a lifetime. You enter a pantheon of cities with the vision and daring to put one on. Good for you. Good for us.