Not Laughing at #SochiProblems: Some People Have to Live There, You Know

from my most recent post at Religion News Service…

Look, I get it: people don’t go to the Olympics expecting to endure what seems to them like developing-world problems. There are serious concerns and controversies about the winter Olympics at Sochi, and it’s hard not to see the ridiculous mishaps as a humorous end to so much arrogance mixed with incompetence on the part of the government. But from where I sit (literally), most of the jokes about the conditions at Sochi just make me cringe; the Instagrammed ‘hilarity’ strikes me as so much poverty porn. Because a lot of people actually have to live under such incompetence, and not just for a few weeks. And that’s not easy.

“Babushka Lives Here,” by Anton Novoselov. Russia, 2013. Photo courtesy Anton Novoselov via Flickr Creative Commons.

{read the whole post at Religion News Service here.}