Text B The expansion of Olympics：Western culture’s...
4-7 Western Culture
The Olympic Games are taken seriously by many countries.Aside from the economic sphere，it is another avenue for the West to display its“superiority”over the rest of the world.How is this achieved？
A wide-eyed TV commentator in Australia remarked at the end of a pulsating Olympic semi-final soccer match between Nigeria and Brazil in which the former triumphed：“This is unbelievable！Nigeria of all countries！”
In similar tones，headlinewriters in the West's leading press described the victory over Brazil as an“upset”.This phrase，especially as it relates to the Olympic Games，is significant.At the heart of such journalism is the misleading construction of the Olympics as an apolitical event.We aremisled not in the sense of being blind to favoritism—but through propagation of the assumption that the Olympics represent all of humanity's triumph，that winning athletes represent the culmination of human excellence.The deepermeta-level of politics，in which the Olympics are essentially a massive Western exercise in cultural domination，is avoided.
But this should not be a surprise since“civilization”has come to mean Western civilization.Indeed，the Olympics are about the ascension of the West.The Olympics flame passing on unextinguished from ancient Athens to the modern era is about the unproblematic transmission of Hellenic values to global culture.The flame should not be doused，meaning that the values of the West should not be challenged.Like Mount Olympus，they should stand tall above all other peoples，values and visions.