The city of Houston, for reasons I will likely never fully understand, suffers from an inferiority complex of immense proportions. Houston is the fourth largest metropolitan area in the country, and yet it's baseball team moans about it's "small market" status. It seems that every decision that doesn't go Houston's way is perceived as a slight. What is up with this city-wide poor self-image and lack of self-esteem? Why is it that we waste so much energy on what people outside of Houston think? Personally, I think it's much ado about nothing. Since when does Houston NEED to impress anyone else?
The USOC yesterday chose New York and San Francisco as their candidate cities for the 2012 Olympics. No, it was not intended as a rebuke of Houston, but that seems to be the way city leaders are interpreting the decision. So what if Houston is no longer in the running for the 2012 Olympics? Some of us might actually see that as a blessing. Seriously, do we really need the extra traffic, increased security, and unbridled price-gouging that would accompany the 2012 Olympiad, had it come to H-town?
There are some, though, like the Chronk's Fran Blinebury, who see the USOC's decision as just another slap in the face to the collection of bayous we call "home":
In truth, the deck was stacked and one could even make the argument Houston was strung along and brought into the final four only to push, prod and goad the other three cities into getting their houses in order.
It is likely Washington didn't stand a real chance of advancing either in these tenuous times. Too much of a political lightning rod.
San Francisco, with its hills and cable cars and Golden Gate Bridge, has long been the favorite tourist city in America, and was the safest, frilliest choice.
Protestations to the contrary, it is hard to get around the notion the tragedy of Sept. 11 didn't give New York an added sympathy factor.
"We do more than tell an American story," said Dan Doctoroff, the NY2012 Foundation president and deputy mayor. "We do more than tell an American story. We're the only place where anyone can come from anywhere in the world and find themselves at home."
That, of course, is just among the taxi drivers.
"I like to think of Houston as an international city," said Houston 2012 Foundation chairman George DeMontrond III. "I guess my idea of an international city and the USOC's just isn't the same."
To the hookah-smoking member of the IOC in Istanbul and the voter in Antwerp taking a bite of his Belgian chocolate, maybe we are merely a maze of freeway traffic and refineries.
Or, in an international word-association game, perhaps the automatic link these days is Houston-Enron. Thanks again, Kenny Boy.
Please, let's lose the sour grapes and get on with the business of making Houston a better place to live. Losing the 2012 Olympics hardly qualifies as a blow to the city's image- unless we choose to interpret it as such. Houston has much bigger and much more pressing issues to attend to. Focusing on the "loss" of the 2012 Olympics would be to miss the point. That, I think, would be a silly mistake.
