Chicago's Loss Casts Light on Anti-US Sentiment

The first-round knockout of Chicago’s Olympic bid speaks to an unpleasant fact, writes Mike Lopresti: “A lot of people out there don't like us. They don't care if President Obama is eloquent and the first lady is charming.” If it had come down to just Chicago and Rio, with South America never having hosted the games before, that would’ve been one thing. But “to be the first city eliminated speaks to something deeper. This was a repudiation.”

Blame it on Iraq, Afghanistan, Wall Street, or the YouTube video that showed what life is like for some of Chicago’s students—violent and short. Or chalk it up to people's desire to thumb their noses at the strongest and the richest. “The IOC voters might have loved shaking President Obama's hands and posing for pictures,” Lopresti writes for USA Today. “But they sure as blazes were not going to let a President of the United States tell them what to do.”
(More Chicago Olympics stories.)