This boycott is for you NBC, GE, Coca-Cola, etc.

zoomar/flickr

Some people love the Summer Olympics. For me, it was always the Winter Games. Phil Mahre. Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner. Torville and Dean. Mike Eruzione. The best game I have watched in any sport in the last decade had to be the 2010 Olympic hockey final between the U.S. and Canada in Vancouver.

There is something about snow and ice that just warms me.

So it's going to be that much harder not to turn on the television and watch the Sochi Olympics, which begin on Feb. 6. But I can't watch. I won't. Not one second -- unless there is the kind of news many of us fear and none of us wants to see happen.

Sweet One/flickr

Barring that, I will not view, listen, tweet, post or otherwise support these Games in any way that can benefit NBC or sponsors such as General Electric, McDonald's, Coca-Cola or VISA. It's my little protest of all these companies that have turned their collective back on the human rights violations of Russia to make a buck by sponsoring these Olympic Games.

Why hit on them? After all, they didn't choose Sochi. That was the IOC's unfathomable decision. I don't know how Russia won the bid to host the 2014 Games, although it's hard not to wonder. But regardless, it's clear the IOC had its own agenda in placing these Games so close to a war zone. An actual war zone, for God's sake.

So we can't do anything about the IOC by ourselves. But we can send a message to the companies that support it. If enough of us boycott their telecasts and products and stain them all for buying into Sochi -- and believe me, I am not alone -- maybe they will in turn send a message to the IOC that will actually be heard. Maybe they can be the ones to make a difference.

And maybe this will be the last time the IOC chooses a host that threatens the lives of its own citizens, places so many needlessly in harm's way and even poisons stray dogs.

Maybe not. But I couldn't live with myself if I supported the Sochi Olympics in any way. Can you?

#Principle6 #StonewallSochi.

#StonewallSochi #SingSochi

An athlete boycott of the Sochi Olympics was never going to happen. Let's be clear about that. Yes, Harvey Fierstein's op-ed piece in The New York Times comparing the anti-gay laws and ugly rhetoric in Russia to the anti-Semitic rants of the Nazi's before the 1936 Games was compelling.

As if a compelling argument actually mattered.

We all get what matters: Money. Obscene amounts of money have been made and will be made in these Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia in 2014. And that's why there won't be a national boycott. Money always trumps human dignity. But we already knew that, didn't we?

And hey, the IOC says Russia has assured everyone that it won't arrest athletes or fans during the Games. The real horror, brutality and inhumanity will be saved only for its own citizens. So there's really no need for the world to care or even notice. Move along, people, nothing to see here ...

So what are those of good conscience to do about these Games, which will be held in a frightening country where athletes will try to compete at their best while under the threat of jail or expulsion if they offer a statement of support to the oppressed?