Angry in the Great White North

The Olympic Games represent a moment when the world can come together as one to celebrate elitism, avarice, and favouritism:

Tight restrictions on the marketing of Vancouver 2010 coins imposed by the Games' organizing committee have left many Canadian coin dealers with an Olympic-sized headache.

The primary concern of dealers in Canada is that most of them have been told by the Royal Canadian Mint and/or the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC) that they may not market Olympic coins through their websites.

Canadian Coin News was made aware of the situation by Brian Grant-Duff, of All-Nations Stamps and Coins in Vancouver.

On April 11, Grant-Duff was told by a representative of VANOC that he was not allowed to sell Olympic Royal Canadian Mint products online or use such terms as Vancouver 2010, Olympics, etc. on his website.

"They told me 'you've got 24 hours to get this stuff off your website,' " Grant-Duff said.

Quickly! Avert your eyes!

Actually, you can see it. I just can't market the coin through the website, or suggest you spend any money to buy one.

Nor would I. I mean, why would the Vancouver Olympics need even more money? It's like throwing good money after bad:

Organizers of the Vancouver Winter Olympics will receive an additional $110 million from the Canadian and B.C. governments to cover escalating costs of building venues for the 2010 Games.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell announced the long-awaited cash infusion during a news conference in Vancouver on Wednesday.

Each level of government will contribute $55 million, bringing taxpayers' expenditure on venue construction to $580 million.

Vancouver Olympic organizers originally pegged the cost of building venues at $470 million.

So the VANOC begs for money from the government. Then it turns around and bullies people trying to promote the Olympics by threatening to have a federal Crown Corporation cut those people off:

[Grant-Duff] added that the VANOC representative threatened to go to the Mint and tell them to cut All Nations off if he continued to market the products online.

You know, the way I figure it, if I was into the government for over half-a-billion dollars, I'd be very circumspect about telling other people that the government dances to my tune.

Of course, the VANOC blames the Mint for the confusion:

Kirk Parsons of Colonial Acres in Kitchener, Ont., which purchases its product from both the Mint and distributors, said his company has been "fighting with the Mint for months on this one."

And when he contacted the Mint, he said the Crown corporation told him everything was being controlled by VANOC, while VANOC told him he should contact the Mint.

The VANOC seems to want to make certain no one actually buys these stupid coins:

In addition to banning online sales of Olympic merchandise, the conditions go as far as to outline how retailers must display the sales of the material in their stores, restricting the amount of floor space the material can take up, and restricting credit card references in advertising to refer only to VISA (the International Programme Partner and official payment card of the Games), even when dealers do accept other credit cards.

I guess by making the effort to purchase a coin an Olympian task, as it were, people might value the purchase more. Personally, I would just be annoyed.

How about this? When the Olympics become a self-sustaining profitable enterprise not requiring a dime (a regular Canadian dime, and not some Olympic commemorative dime) of taxpayer money to put on the dog-and-pony show, then they can be as restrictive and as elitist and as market-unfriendly as they want. But when they grab hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, and then come back and ask for hundreds of millions more, then they lose the right to make these decisions. Like any insolvent debtor, the Olympics ought to be compelled to maximize revenue and maximize exposure at all times in order to get in the black.

In other words, after having begged for over five hundred million dollars of my money and your money, the Olympics ought to put on its tap shoes and start dancing. If it that seems humiliating for such an august organization, too bad. Begging for millions so that some steroid-pumped genetic aberration can bounce up and down on a gym mat should have prepared the Olympic Committee to be able to handle a lot worse humiliation than this.

The Olympic Committee has no moral authority to tell these legitimate coin dealers what they can and cannot sell. These coin dealers work hard and pay their taxes, without asking for handouts from the government. If it weren't for those taxes, the Olympics would have folded already. I think a little gratitude (and lot less attitude) is in order.