January 25-January 31, 1999

Scan this issue. We dare you.

Sure, we're mean. We're tough. We're all over the purveyors of garbage.

But hell, you might even find we say some nice stuff. After all...

...we don't dog everyone.

.

1.25.99

Whorin' at the IOC

The International Olympic Committee is corrupt??? Come on. Next thing you'll tell us is that boxing and organized crime are related.

Poor, fascist Juan Antonio Samaranch is officially under siege. The dude who's been the IOC's generalissimo for the past 19 years was just pilloried this past Sunday on 60 Minutes. Way to keep a low profile there, Johnny. Witnesses are coming out of the woodwork to testify that every city that's bid to host the Olympics in the past quarter-century have offered monumental bribes to obtain the Games.

Gucci handbags, silk scarves, cut-glass ornaments, framed watercolors, coffee-table books, boxes of chocolates, bottles of vintage wine, overflowing fruit baskets. And that, according to one witness, is the stuff that IOC members typically leave behind, because they've got too much other loot to carry. Salt Lake City, land of Mormon and set to host the next Summer Games, evidently bought IOC members prostitutes on their visit.

Though none of your "tough" investigative reports will come right and out and say so, the dirtiest of all Olympians is Samaranch himself. The man served happily under Franco, and refuses to renounce Spain's former dictator. He's a cold, scheming man with the heart of a slaughterhouse attendant, who's even been known to take more than a bribe or two himself. The folks at Nagano, Japan, reportedly gave him a $20,000 antique sword.

Now let's hope he does what all good despots do. Let's hope he falls on it.