I think my friend Julie said it the best over cold beers at Time Passage last week. She works at Wieden and was talking about how some of her clients’ Olympics projects will not happen now because of all the torch hullabaloo. “It’s just sad for everyone,” she said. “Nobody is happy about anything.”

There really aren’t any winners in this whole tragic saga, and after the supposedly tainted games are over, things are going to pretty much return to how they’ve always been (except for the monks in the disputed region who threw everything on the line and those who suffered losses in the riots, of course). In the meantime though, it’s backlash after backlash, ignorant scorn masquerading as righteousness and wounded pride dressed up as nationalism. For a hint of this, check out the anti-French, I-heart-China movement happening within my MSN messenger list:

iheartchina

Over half of my Chinese-Chinese friends on MSN have put the badge on their contact names, in defiance of all the anti-China bullying that they’re undoubtedly reading about in the Chinese newspapers, watching on the Chinese news, and scouring over on the hundreds of blogs and BBS’s peppering China’s cyberscape and devoted to propping up this country’s national pride. Does anyone actually think a battle this mindless and solipsistic is going to have a clear winner, or even less likely, a clear compromise?

It’s just sad for everyone. Why can’t people just sing karaoke and drink beer like me?

Oh yeah, because the world still sucks.