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Is It Ethical to Enjoy the Rio Olympics?

Wrestling with the morality of a troubled edition of the Summer Games.

Seth Sommerfeld
Author: Seth Sommerfeld
Less than 1 min.read
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Political corruption. Economic crisis. Polluted waters. Zika. Who’s ready for the 2016 Rio Olympics (August 5–21)?

I’m an Olympics junkie, the type of idiot who stays up until 3am watching live handball played on the other side of the globe. I want to cheer like a dumb fan, but the mess in Brazil makes it hard to enjoy the competition with a clear conscience. I’ve learned how to suppress guilt just enough to enjoy football, but this feels different. It feels wrong.

Then again, these athletes have trained all their lives for this, and they didn’t choose the locale. So not watching means not supporting Kirkland sailor Helena Scutt, new Storm star Breanna Stewart, and 13 Husky rowers. They represent not just the USA, but Seattle too. It may be an ethically dubious decathlon, but there’s hope in cheering for these competitors.  So I’ll tune in, but I won’t watch with blinders.

Published in the Washington's Best Beaches issue of Seattle Met.




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Seth Sommerfeld
Seth Sommerfeld
Assistant Editor (Arts) Seth Sommerfeld runs the arts department at Seattle Met, crafting the magazine's On the Town section, editing the Culture Fiend blog, and contributing to reader service features such as “The Ultimate Seahawks Guide” and the front-of-the-book department, Mudroom. Seth has written about music and culture for Rolling Stone, Spin, Pacific Northwest Inlander, Charleston Post and Courier, Syracuse Post-Standard, and Billings Gazette. He also extensively covered the NBA Draft for years for Fox Sports and NBADraft.net, and was published as part of Myth, Media, and Culture in Star Wars: An Anthology. Originally from Billings, Montana, Seth first lived in Washington while earning an undergraduate degree in journalism and broadcasting at Gonzaga University. He followed up those studies at Syracuse University, where he earned a master’s degree in arts journalism.