Exhibits Presented for Insight and History - Winter Olympics (gag alert)

Minutes after an official Olympic event here, the actor Robert Redford sat backstage with a woman who had been forced into prostitution in Bombay. The woman, Maili Lama, said through a translator that customers as well as brothel owners are to blame for horror stories such as hers.

Redford, who had presented Lama with an award for helping other women escape similar circumstances, was asked whether he favored the legalization of prostitution. He said he did and compared it to "legalizing certain drugs," a position he said he also supported. "Legalizing prostitution, given that it exists, would probably save us tragedies like this," Redford said while nodding toward Lama. "This is about oppression. With legalizing, there would be no more reason to be oppressed. I believe that."

The conversation took place after the Reebok Human Rights Awards in a theater downtown, one of dozens of presentations, performances and exhibits around this city during the Olympic Arts Festival. Festival events are more than sideshows, but few are seen on television in the canned version of the Winter Games presented to American audiences.

While the official logo of the Olympics is five interlocking rings, the extended extravaganza here could be diagrammed with many concentric circles. Athletes and their competitions are the epicenter. Extending outward are orbits of commercialism, a party scene, political activism, religious proselytizing and multilingual mingling.

The Arts Festival, also called the Cultural Olympiad, is one of the largest organized activities. It is sanctioned by the Olympic charter, which requires it of the host city. A visitor weary of sports can hear Itzhak Perlman play his violin, see the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater perform a ballet inspired by the sprinter Florence Griffith Joyner, listen to a presentation of cowboy poems and songs or view a new release of an expanded version of the film "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial."

Those seeking intellectual stimulation and historical perspective can ride the light rail to the University of Utah to see exhibits called "The Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936" and "Homeland in the West," a photographic study of Jews in the 19th century in Utah.

The juxtaposition of exhibits, next to each other in the Marriott Library, is hardly coincidental. Raymond T. Grant, the artistic director of the Arts Festival, said the Olympics give a host community a chance to impress visitors from around the world.

"The two in a very powerful way are related," Grant said of the exhibits, adding that the Berlin Olympics were the first to use a torch relay at the opening ceremony. "In 1936, the Berlin Olympics became sports propaganda."

Here and now, he said, "There is a lot of interest in the whole Mormon Games" and how visitors will perceive the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is based here.

While the exhibit on the Berlin Games has an inherent political message, other unplanned agendas come from the outside. Some people protested the Olympic Command Performance Rodeo between the United States and Canada. "The animal-rights activists had a bone to pick with me," Grant said. "They picketed and followed our torch relay with a video truck that showed scenes of alleged abuse of animals."

At the human-rights awards, Dita Sari of Indonesia, a labor activist, refused to attend or accept her award because "the corporation produces products globally," according to a news release issued by Reebok.

There are also lighter components. The International Ice Carving Competition took place at the Utah County Historic Courthouse. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir sang with the opera star Frederica von Stade and again with the clarinetist Richard Stoltzman. There are several exhibitions about American Indian nations, including one called Discover Navajo. As part of this presentation, an "original code talker" tells how the United States Marine Corps used 29 Navajo code talkers to develop an unbreakable communication code using native languages during World War II.

All arts events are under the authority of Zhenliang He, an executive board member of the International Olympic Committee and chairman of the committee on culture and Olympic education. The 2008 Summer Games will be in Beijing and, Grant said, "After the selection of Beijing, the discussion of human rights became an issue."

Zhenliang said that the host city, through its Olympic Arts Festival, "introduces its own culture to visitors" and that a mutual exchange with visitors "will enhance mutual respect, the basis of peace in the world."

But his mood changed quickly when asked about the Reebok Human Rights Awards as part of the official arts festival here.

"No, in this?" Zhenliang said. "I haven't heard that. In the arts festival, there's no such award."

When told that it certainly was a part, he replied: "I didn't know that. If they do so, it's very dangerous to put this because there is controversy about that and we are here not to open any polemics or controversy."

Grant said the event was "ablaze in our brochure," adding that he found it interesting that Zhenliang was not aware of it.

More traditional art forms on display here included an uneven mix of tributes to Olympic athletes called "Keepers of the Flame" at the University of Utah. One highlight of the show was the ballet "Pas de Deux Eternelle," in which two dancers, accompanied by cello and violin, portrayed the Russian skating champions Yekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov, who were married. Grinkov died of a heart attack in 1995. During the dance, a black veil fell over the male dancer, gradually covering him as he gently came to rest.

A much different tribute to the Olympics thundered in the Abravanel Hall on Sunday when the United States Army Field Band and Soldiers' Chorus played "Bugler's Dream," the theme used on Olympic telecasts, as well as John Philip Sousa marches and an all-American mix of country, jazz and barbershop quartet tunes.

A few days earlier in the Capitol Theater, Pete Seeger and a group of folk musicians performed with the Children's Dance Theater. Afterward, Seeger sat on a tall stool backstage to discuss art and Olympics. Now gray-bearded and balding, the 82-year-old Seeger attended the Olympics once before, he said, in Austria, in 1964.

"We paid to see the ski jump," he said. "All I saw was the backs of people's heads. The best way to see the Olympics is TV."

So did he plan to watch this year? No, at least not on the following day. "Writing day," Seeger said. "I've got new songs."

Around Seeger, excited girls from the dance group discussed the show and got their coats to head home. Seeger, gazing their way, praised them, praised their mothers for driving them to rehearsals and praised Mary Ann Lee, the artistic director of the company.

"If there is a human race in 100 years, women will be the ones to show us all the way on the basis of nurturing, not fame and power and glory," Seeger said.

Asked whether Olympic sports are compatible with an arts festival, Seeger enthusiastically replied: "Absolutely! Words, as you know, mean different things to different people. The world is full of angry people sparring with words. They get so mad, all they understand is guns. If words fail, try sport, try arts, try dancing, try food. This is one of the most mixed-up countries in the world. I'm all for mixing it up."

Robert Redford is really stupid. And Pete Seeger is naive. His statement about nurturing women made me laugh. Oh yeah, I've noticed how nurturing those NOW women are, and politicians like Hillary and Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer are...NOT.

Robert Redford sounds like a realist. Societies around the world have tried to supress prostitution and drugs for thousands of years with no success. The major results from their efforts have been crime and corruption. Legalizing prostitution and drugs would eliminate the majority of violent crime, clean up the "products" offered in these areas, and allow significant tax dollars to be collected on the "products". As far a Pete Seeger is concerned ,though I rarely side with a liberal, he also appears to be realistic in his statements here. In my experience, generally speaking, I find that women are considerably more nuturing than men.

Oh, I agree that women are more nurturing, well, most of us are, but historically it has been shown that as soon as women get power, they turn into copies of men. They too seek the power and the glory and the fame.

And as for Robert Redford, he's hit his head too many times while skiing at Sundance. Making prostitution legal is not going to make life any easier or safer for women...

"If there is a human race in 100 years, women will be the ones to show us all the way on the basis of nurturing, not fame and power and glory,"

And Pete Seeger is naive. His statement about nurturing women made me laugh.

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I'm sorry but you're reactionary views want to make me puke. Just because a liberal says woman are nurturers doesn't mean you have to say something so political and ugly! I would say by nature woman are nurturers. Can't people here respond to comments from liberals in a calm fashion, and not automatically brand their rational views as irrational just because most of their views are irrational.

And I will expound on why I said what I said. For years feminists have been saying that things would change once women were put in charge, that women are more nurturing and care more about the downtrodden etc. Well, I sure don't see that occurring from most of the female politicians. They seem to think that abortion is the #1 issue for all women, that we all want a career instead of a husband and a family, that when we get married, we all want to work, and juggle our children around. Women who stay home and raise their children are routinely put down by the feminists. In their eyes, a woman is nothing unless she has a career.

And the ironic part is that the women who choose to put their careers on hold or go part time after they have children will have a greater impact on the next generation than all of those childless feminists. And if Seeger meant that women will have a huge impact on the next hundred years by having children and raising them, good for him.

Pete Seeger is, and will always be eternally depressed that the whole world is not a Communist Workers paradise. Just try to ignore Commies like him and movie stars like Redford. Who cares what any movie star thinks?

But prostitution IS legal. I gave money to a politician several years ago, and, wouldn't you know, he screwed me and my beliefs.

Oh, you mean the kind where they sell sex. . . . .

Wonder how the legal hookers would feel if they gave some thought to the fact that about the first 150 nights on their backs each year would be spent grinding to pay the taxes on the proceeds of their endeavors. What says Robert Redford to that?

As long as we're talking about X42 and Prostitution, it reminds me of a joke:

Every afternoon when Bill Clinton takes a jog
around his Harlem office, he passes a hooker on the same
street corner.

As he goes by, she shouts out "FIFTY DOLLARS !"
and he yells "NO, FIVE DOLLARS!"
This continues for several days. He jogs by, she
says "FIFTY DOLLARS!",
and he says "NO, FIVE DOLLARS!"

Then his wife Senator Hillary Clinton visits and decides
she wants to go jogging with Bill.
As they are approaching the now infamous street-corner,
Bill suddenly realizes that the hooker will yell out
her $50 offer and that he will have some explaining to do with Hillary.

Bill is still in a quandary as to what to do as they turn
the corner, and sure enough, there is the hooker.
He turns his head and jogs by without looking her way,
hoping she will miss him.
Just as they pass, the hooker looks up and yells to Bill,
"SEE WHAT YOU GET FOR FIVE DOLLARS!

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