A Proud Sponsor's Message

“There are 6 billion of us,” Morgan Freeman begins, his warm, rumbling baritone lulling us from the start. “We all come from unique places with unique ways of looking at the world. We don’t always agree, but for a few shining weeks we set it all aside.” The images of hands outstretched toward the golden sky, the smile of a Nigerian runner only half believing the display, sharing an amazed embrace with her teammates, the burning torch, the flapping flags, are arranged to convey a sense of humanity and common purpose. “We come together and stand and cheer and celebrate as one,” Freeman rumbles on, slowly. “We forget all the things that make us different and remember all the things that make us the same.” Then a cluster of hands thrust upward form the background for the message: “GO WORLD.” As these words fade, the corporate logo appears in their place, and Freeman’s voice is back. “Visa, proud sponsor of the Olympic Games,” he says, as if the company were rooting for everyone no matter country of origin, and he could have left it at that. But Freeman’s baritone continues, abandoning the lofty sentiments and returning us to an earthly realm of consumerism and transaction processing and privilege. “And the only card accepted there,” he says.
So organized sport might be the thing that brings us together, but only the Visa cardholder can buy a little piece of that spirit. The rest of us--the poor, huddled masses who can merely dream of carrying around an imprinted plastic card, the key to the Olympics, the key that sets the torch aflame and makes Nigerians smile--the rest of us must be content to watch the games on TV.
And dream. Dream the Visa dream, the American Dream, the dream of comfort and success and leisure. We can dream about buying power. We can dream about status and class. We can strive to achieve these things, to possess the card that gets you in.
Go world? Go you.