"The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images." - Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord

After the Stanley Cup riot of 1994, a Georgia Straight article, titled "Stupidville" pondered: "[Vancouverites] had better decide what we want this community to be about, besides pretty vistas when it doesn't rain. What shared tasks can we undertake whose achievement will fill us with civic pride? What conditions are needed to come to unconditionally love this place, not for where it is, but for what it is?" But after 15 years of more pretty vistas and nature fetishism, we have failed to produce "something nobler than a mob heading to Stupidville," as the Straight hoped.

It is a likely truism that there's a sucker born every minute, but only in Vancouver would those so defined revel in their "sucker-dom." Or worse, even pay to re-brand themselves as such all over again. Yet this is exactly what some Vancouverites will be doing when the city celebrates the one year anniversary of the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Olympic Games.

Much of the world is focused rightfully on a street revolution in Egypt about human rights, a revolt that could utterly change the status quo in the Middle East. Meanwhile, our politicians and those enamored of last year's Olympic circus obsess about recapturing the golden moment. When not so distracted, the corporate press zero in on the massacre of shed dogs in Whistler.