Did the Chicago 2016 bid have the IOC at hello?

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Two weeks ago, when Chicago 2016 presented its bid plans and the city to a wide group of international sports leaders and businesspeople at the Sport Accord meeting in Denver, the bid committee was criticized for having taken too academic an approach, with little oomph in its videos.

Two days before members of the International Olympic Committee’s evaluation commission arrived in Chicago to inspect the city and its plans, bid Chairman Patrick Ryan told the Tribune editorial board the visitors would see videos with a lot more ‘it’ factor.

You wanted to tell the committee simply to channel the spirit of the opening song in ‘Chicago: The Musical,’ when Velma Kelly breathily croons, ‘Come on, babe / Why don’t we paint the town / And all that jazz,’ even if the rest of the song’s lyrics do evoke the Capone-era narrative it took the city 50 years to shake.

The videos the bid committee showed the IOC were less brassy and sassy, but their narrative was evocative – at times movingly so – of a contemporary view of the city.

The recorded welcomes from President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and two-time Olympic gold medalist Michael Jordan were, by necessity, visually static but nevertheless important, both for who the speakers were and what they said.

Having Obama and Clinton actively supporting Chicago’s efforts is undeniably important in a world that esteems both highly (she got a rock-star media reception after arriving in Singapore four years ago to pitch New York’s 2012 bid), for who they are, for the positions they hold and for the transformative change they represent in presidential administration policies to a planet fed up with George W. Bush’s leadership.

And don’t discount Jordan’s impact, because he was a member of a U.S. Olympic team, the 1992 Dream Team, that transformed basketball into a sport that now challenges soccer’s supremacy in many parts of the world, especially among urban youth.

A year after the 1992 Olympics, I would find knockoff Jordan jerseys at flea markets in French villages you can barely find on a map. Many of the great foreign players in the NBA were inspired to excellence by the surpassing brilliance of Jordan and his fellow Dream Teamers – Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Charles Barkley, David Robinson, et al.

But my favorite Chicago 2016 video, for its message, its simple but effective visuals and its delightful ending, is one called, ‘Hello, sister,’ in which a rainbow coalition of girls with roots in Chicago’s 27 sister cities deliver that greeting in each of the city’s languages and Oprah Winfrey says, ‘We see all people as our friends, and all friends as family.’

The video (see below) emphasizes not only the wonderful diversity of 21st century Chicago and the universality the Olympic movement professes to espouse, but also, in highlighting girls, the increasing opportunity and promise for women in contemporary America.

I would say that women were the two most noteworthy guests at Monday night’s gala dinner for the evaluation commission: Oprah, the ne plus ultra for success in the commercial world; and Valerie Jarrett, one of President Obama’s closest advisers.

That was not without irony, given that only one of the 13 evaluation commission members, chairperson Nawal El Moutawakel, is a woman, and only 16 of the 106 IOC members who will vote on the 2016 host city are women.

And Chicago 2016’s leadership also was short on women until recently, when former mayoral Chief of Staff Lori Healey became the bid committee president.

Yet ‘Hello, sister’ was not meant as feminist hectoring – even if we still live in a country and a world where real gender equality is far from being realized and plenty more hectoring is needed. You could see the video that way if you want, or you could see it as a simple, heartwarming welcome, or you could see it as Chicago wanting to emphasize inclusiveness.

And that’s where the ending comes in: three boys on a pool deck saying, in Spanish, ‘Hola, hermano.’
Hello, brother.

For all the preening and pompousness of many of the pooh-bahs in charge, for all the gigantism and commercialism involved, for all the transitory nature and artificial environment of its universal goodwill, the Summer Olympics give people a chance to say hello to one another.

And if the greeting is sincere and the principals are open-minded, sometimes that chance is all it takes.

Sometimes, as the Chicago 2016 video proves while introducing the city to its IOC visitors, you can have me at hello.

-- Philip Hersh