After this past Sunday's "You call that a scandal?" commentary on Salt Lake's tainted Olympic bid process, I have received a number of reactions, including:
Benson, you're an idiot.Benson, how can you defend the corruption?
Benson, aren't we supposed to have higher standards around here?
And my personal favorite:
Benson, you're a genius.
In my haste at maintaining that the Olympic scandal was no scandal at all, I did, however, neglect to credit it for what I saw as its biggest accomplishment: providing me with 27 columns the past calendar year, a personal record for a single topic.
Today's makes 28.
Yes, I continue to marvel at the number of people who ignore the evidence that suggests that Salt Lake's Olympic bidding was no more and no less exuberant than other cities, before and since.
And just what's so bad about the "Everybody else does it" defense?
If you're an NBA coach and you know the referees don't call traveling, do you tell your guys not to travel? Or, to stay competitive, do you follow the rules as they're enforced?
And yes, I marvel even more at the suggestion that anything was done in secret.
To anyone who believes that local companies and individuals were donating tens of thousands of dollars to the Olympic bid and then not bothering to monitor where that money was going, I say, hey, wanta buy a bridge?
Among those IOC voters and their relatives who got scholarships, jobs, gifts and donations, remember, the city and state hired at least one of them, each, while others attended the University of Utah, BYU and even Salt Lake Community College.
IOC affiliated people were roaming around here like seagulls. One bid committee member used to trot his "IOC son" around the state and introduce him to Rotary and Lions Clubs.
We were feeding these people, employing them, healing them, educating them and sending them to Deer Valley for the weekend. The whole operation was about as secret as the deer hunt.
Also remember that some of the most expensive gifts given to IOC delegates -- gifts worth way more than the IOC's loosely defined spending minimum -- were presented ceremoniously by the likes of the governor, the mayor and other heads of state.
We didn't call them bribes until somebody else did.
Then, in classic overreaction -- a historic problem around here, just ask Bryant Gumbel -- we quickly condemned ourselves, got out the whip and started flogging.
Ever since, we've been trying to remove a splinter with a claw hammer.
Around a million was spent on wooing the voters? Hah. Petty cash compared to what's been spent on the Justice Department investigation alone.
The only intriguing part to me is what looks suspiciously like a cover-up.
Two things I'd like to know:
How did all those executive committee meeting minutes get shredded?
Why did ethics committee chairman Gordon Hall not show up at the committee report last January, leaving the explaining to David Jordan, a known devotee of Gov. Mike Leavitt? (Is it ethical for the chairman not to be there? And why did Hall choose to step down from that committee shortly thereafter?)
The worst thing that could happen now is a public trial that gets everybody's testimony on the record -- and a lot of powerful people who have managed so far to distance themselves from the whole thing could well wind up getting exposed.
Better for them, it all just goes away.
Because uncovering a cover-up, now that could begin to qualify as a genuine scandal.