Some dear friends who live near London are counting the minutes until the opening of the 2012 Olympics.
When these friends visited Georgia a few weeks ago, they spoke with reverence of their precious tickets and with rare un-British pride of London’s dramatic transformation in preparation for the Games.
They also complained about the churlish British press and its obsession with what my friends described as “all the warts.”
This was familiar. Sixteen years ago, a similar anticipation suffused Atlanta. We were like children awaiting a Christmas that would never dawn, our anticipation stoked by six years of difficult preparations that seemed both interminable and all too brief.
Back then, I made a living for this newspaper focusing hard on “all the warts.” It’s the newspaper’s job to remain the sober voice in such intoxicating times.
It can be lonely work. I traveled the globe with Atlanta’s Olympic bidders and stayed on the beat after we were awarded the Games in 1990. Through it all, Atlanta’s Olympic team, led by the often irascible Billy Payne, kept me at arm’s length. I was the “other,” in their midst. The word “pariah” is slightly too strong, but you get the idea.
They complained when I wrote about the lingering financial disaster of the 1976 Montreal Games and when I probed Atlanta’s financial risk. They didn’t like it when I wrote about the poor neighborhoods that stood near or on potential Olympic venues. They really hated it when I wrote about the fading aristocrats, semi-corrupt sports politicos and assorted miscreants who populated the International Olympic Committee. They raged when I described Izzy, our puzzling Olympic mascot, as a blue slug. They even complained that I didn’t dress like them.
So, it was a strange and rare moment when I was admitted to their suite in Tokyo’s Prince Tokanawa Hotel a few hours after I filed the story that ran under the famous “It’s Atlanta!” headline.
Payne sat on a silk-covered sofa, rolling a very nice Cuban cigar in his fingers. Andy Young sat semi-reclined in an armchair listening patiently as Payne lustily recounted Atlanta’s impressive win. When Payne started this quest, Atlanta was the longest of long shots. Everyone assumed the 1996 Games — the centennial of the Modern Olympics — would return to their birthplace in Athens. Everyone but Billy.
Two years earlier, Payne had visited the mayor to sell his Olympic scheme. Young humored him cautiously. “That’s all I need,” Young recalled thinking. “Some crazy guy with an idea that would leave the city about a billion dollars in debt.”
But there we were, savoring the win with pricey bourbon and expensive cigars. The talk turned to the future — to the promise of what Atlanta could be by 1996. I confess I joined in the celebrating and dreaming, briefly abandoning a reporter’s detachment. But, heck, I loved Atlanta, too.
Then came morning.
The rest of the world awakened to mixed feelings toward the new Olympic city. One European newspaper’s headline read: “The Dog has Finally Caught the Car.” Despite its self-declared status as the next great international city, Atlanta was virtually unknown.
And Mayor Maynard Jackson didn’t help when he was asked whether upstart Atlanta would dare to even hope to match the splendor of Barcelona, the 1992 Olympic city. “We may not have the Sagrada Familia,” Jackson answered, referring to the Spanish city’s magnificent cathedral. “But we do have the Big Chicken.”
And so it went.
I’m reminded of the “all the warts” dynamic as our next “It’s Atlanta!” moment approaches. The Tuesday after the opening of the London Olympics, metro Atlantans will decide whether to pay a 1 percent sales tax to fund a 10-year multibillion-dollar transportation program.
Maybe it lacks the glamour of the Olympics, but the T-SPLOST holds the same power over our future — perhaps more. Because folks at the newspaper live here and will share in the outcome, we feel some urgency about providing everything you need to make a good decision.
For more than a year, Ariel Hart, our transportation writer, has dug deeply. She’s here early and stays late and cares passionately about her role in this drama. She has been merciless, and at times her reporting has caused some heartburn for T-SPLOST supporters.
During a news meeting the other day, one of our editors wondered whether our T-SPLOST coverage has been overly skeptical, perhaps focusing too much on questioning and challenging. But that’s our job — to once again tell the sober truth.
Warts and all.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution wants to explain openly to readers what we do and why. Discuss this column and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s coverage of other areas at editor Kevin Riley’s Facebook page,
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