Jazz tickets or college tuition. What's the difference?
OK, Jazz tickets cost more.But other than that?
What I don't understand about the current favors-for-votes issue surrounding Salt Lake's successful bid for the Games of 2002 is why all the surprise?
Like this is news? Was I the only one who, for about four years straight, used to watch IOC voters sitting courtside at the Delta Center at Jazz games -- a beaming Tom Welch and his glamorous ex-wife Alma beside them? Was I the only one who did not think the people wearing the turbans and tunics paid for those seats?
Didn't everyone notice Dave Johnson hovering around the voters every time they came to town, making sure their VIP (and comped) hotel accommodations were extra OK, looking as nervous as a college basketball coach around a hot new recruit from Queens, only more so?
At the heat of the bidding -- and especially so since the failed 1991 vote in Birmingham -- every time an IOC person turned around he was bumping into something heartfelt from Utah. If it wasn't a 3-inch steak at that farmhouse in Lillehammer, or a Stetson hat, or a Sinatra concert, it was a little something for the family education plan. The whole bid process, from start to finish to everything in between, was -- and is -- shameless bribery. In the Olympic underworld, you get what you pay for. If you don't understand that, move to Oostersund.
The real intrigue is the identity of the person who anonymously slipped the "evidence" to a TV station. What disgruntled person held onto the letter -- on SLOC stationery, from SLOC vice president Dave Johnson to Cameroon coed Sonia Essomba, daughter of IOC delegate Rene Essomba, regarding the end of her "scholarship" -- for nearly two years before releasing it for public consumption?
Who could be that vindictive? That scorned? That upset?
Let's see. There must be hundreds. No, more than that. Start with the four billion or so whose daughters didn't get tuition to American University.
And why was the letter sent to Channel 4 -- the station where Johnson's wife, Kim, is a news anchor?
And just how much more "evidence" is out there?
SLOC being SLOC, it has a difficult time revealing the truth. If you asked CEO Frank Joklik if that's a Rolex he's wearing, he'd answer how important it is to support the time-keeping industry and why would anyone question something as humanitarian as a wrist watch.
Asked about the tuition payments, Joklik was only slightly more defensive than Junior Seau and Reggie White combined. How could anyone question giving humanitarian aid to an African?
Yeah, right, Frank. How about giving it to the thousands dying daily of AIDS instead of to the daughter of a doctor so she can go to school in Washington, D.C., and order the double mocha at Starbuck's?
How about giving it to someone who doesn't have direct connection to an IOC voter, as in a daughter?
That would be aid. This, no matter what the spin, is a bribe.
C-notes for votes.
And so what? No bribes, no Games. No bribes and it's Switzerland that's trying to explain why it costs almost one and a half billion dollars to hold a ski race even though the Alps are already paid for.
Sure, the preferred way of doing this kind of business is to keep the bribes quiet. That's why they call it "under-the-table."
But when the past resurfaces, staring you in the face with your own letterhead, well, it's like when they caught Mark McGwire last summer with that bottle of Andro in his locker. What are you going to do but admit it?
It's when you try to say it's not there, or it's not what it appears, that things only get worse.
Just because you say you didn't have a relationship with that woman, doesn't make it so.
Lee Benson accepts faxes at 801-237-2527 and e-mail at (lbenson@desnews.com). His column runs Monday, Wednesday and Friday.