As a New Yorker (OK, I live in the suburbs now, but my 18 years in Gotham give me lifetime membership), I’m glad to see the Olympic Games won’t be in New York in 2012. To me, the endless shilling of New York as a great place to hold the Olympics was a little embarrassing, the relentless sucking up to Olympic officials by everyone from Hillary Clinton to Muhammad Ali to Henry Kissinger excruciating. And those NYC 2012 stickers on the subway cars always left me with the feeling that if I didn’t fall in line with the city’s official pro-Olympic sentiment, something bad would happen. Don’t get me wrong. I think this would be a fantastic place for the Games. But the scenario that would befit the greatest city on Earth would start with Olympic officials begging and pleading New York to host the Games, only to have city officials blow them off. Then, when all other options proved so obviously unsuitable, New York would grudgingly agree to host, all while having the entire thing financed not by taxpayers but by huge international corporations that want their slice of the Big Apple. A girl can dream, can’t she?

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor