COMMENTARY
I don’t wear Speedo swimsuits. I obey the unwritten law – which ought to be codified criminal statute – that middle-aged men don’t wear them.
But I’m a Speedo fan this week. Not because the company said it will no longer sponsor Lamebrain Lochte (his real first name is Ryan) for his boorish behavior in Rio de Janeiro last week. And not because most of Lochte’s other corporate patrons dumped his clueless kiester, too.
What stands out is Speedo’s decision to donate $50,000 of Lochte’s sponsorship fee to aid Brazilian children. It suggests a genuine understanding of what the U.S. Olympic swimmer’s genuine offense was – namely, lying about being mugged – and what a genuine kick to the gut he gave Brazil and Latin America.
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Yes, it was unacceptable that an inebriated Lochte and three other inebriated U.S. swimmers allegedly vandalized a Rio gas station and urinated on its walls. That’s especially unacceptable – and especially stupid – when you’re in another country, representingyour country, at the Olympics.
But because I’m a middle-aged man, I’m also aware that young men – Americans, Brazilians, Martians – get drunk and do jackass things. You take responsibility for it, pay for the damage – maybe spend a night in the pokey, as I and some buddies did after one raucous college celebration 30 years ago – and grow up.
Lochte figuratively urinated on an entire city if not an entire region. Before he so publicly lied about being mugged, Rio and Latin America were getting a sorely needed morale boost from the Olympics.
And there lies Lochte’s really grievous misdeed. Instead of growing up, the 32-year-old narcissist figuratively urinated on an entire city if not an entire region.
He told a global TV audience that he and his chlorine-addled comrades had been robbed at gunpoint at the gas station. As Lochte has now acknowledged, that was probably a lie as bald as their swimmers’ chests. Perhaps a cover-up attempt even more idiotic than the idiocy they were trying to cover up.
It was, in fact, more damaging.
Why? Because before Team Lochte so publicly claimed they'd been assaulted, Rio was getting a sorely needed morale boost from the Olympics.
It's no secret Brazil and Latin America are coping with some of the world's worst violent crime. According to the Center for Public Security and Criminal Justice in Mexico City, Brazil accounts for almost half the 50 cities in the world with the highest homicide rates.
The Olympics didn’t fix that problem – 92 people were shotin greater Rio during the two-week event, 34 fatally – but it was serving up the kind of hopeful glimmer that cities and countries can leverage in the long run.
Th brightest gleam was 24-year-old Rafaela Silva, Brazil’s gold medalist in judo. Silva grew up in Cidade de Deus (City of God), one of Rio’s most violent favelas, or slums, and the eponymous subject of one of Brazil’s most renowned films.
REDEEMABLE RIO
Silva’s story and glory made her country and the world appreciate that there’s much more to favelas like Cidade de Deus than gang warfare, armed robbery and homicide. That they’re redeemable. That they’re worth the investment in people and infrastructure that does the most to reduce criminal mayhem.
I’d argue superstar Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, who again won three gold medals in Rio, has done the same for his country. When he burst on the scene at the 2008 Olympics, Jamaica’s murder rate was the world’s highest. Six years later it had been cut almost in half.
Was Bolt responsible for that? Of course not. Police reform helped. So did more investment in crime-ridden slums like Kingston’s. And so did less public tolerance for Jamaica’s sinister links between political parties and criminal gangs – so starkly described in Marlon James’ acclaimed 2014 novel “A Brief History of Seven Killings.”
But during visits to Jamaica in those years, I became convinced that the affirmative radiance emanating from Bolt and the island’s powerhouse sprinter corps helped encourage that fresher social policy mindset.
Lochte gave that positive vibe the hook and handed center stage back to the usual despair. Back to the stale mindset that says violent crime is hopelessly entrenched in Latin America – so you can get away with telling a fib about guns being held to your head in Latin America.
Whatever, dude, as Lochte would say. In one sense it's he and the American swimmers who turned out to be the thieves. They robbed the spotlight from Silva. And it will take more than $50,000 from Speedo to recover it.
