Money Games in Salt Lake City

Pssst. Hey, buddy. Over here in the alley. Wanna buy a Winter Olympics ticket? The Salt Lake City organizing committee--you remember it for its successful, shall we say, financial persuasion of International Olympic Committee members who chose the site for next winter’s Games--has now begun scalping some of its own tickets.

NBC, of course, is paying $1.25 billion for TV rights to the Sydney and Salt Lake Games. Now, the Salt Lake committee has picked prime tickets for select events like figure skating and men’s hockey and, lot by lot, is dribbling them out to the highest bidder on EBay. Some bids are already approaching $8,000.

Mitt Romney, Salt Lake committee president, explains that in the past, tickets to the best seats usually went to good old boys or ticket brokers anyway. So the committee decided it should get this action to help finance its parallel Paralympic Games. Romney says he’s proud to be “democratizing” ticket sales.

Is it Salt Lake’s altitude that causes this thinking? Ten-dollar Olympic key chains are one thing. What is democratic about ensuring that only royalty can afford a prime seat to these allegedly amateur games? And ultimately what’s to stop pro football or basketball from lucrative scalping of all tickets? How about doctors auctioning prime office visits?

Sure, coveted tickets to just about anything are scalped, but it’s hardly a positive activity that officials should emulate. By Salt Lake’s thinking, hey, if it’s going to happen anyway, everyone should get into crime as long as some proceeds go to charity.

Romney and his aides have worked valiantly to salvage Salt Lake’s tarnished Olympics. Now they stand to tarnish it again, by winning the Olympic gold medal for gouging.