POWER PLAY: OLYMPIC TORCH A SYMBOL FOR ADVERTISERS

In the consumer-driven society in which we live, it is impossible to escape advertising.

Even if you moved deep into the Montana outback within small-arms range of Theodore Kaczynski's swingin' bachelor pad, you still wouldn't be able to completely elude advertising. The woods of that great state are covered with billboards advertising Antisocial Gunowners Weekly and Freemen-brand moisturizer and bath oils.

This country is built on the buying and selling of products, services and images. But advertising often reveals itself as the parasitic critter it is. Not only does advertising use people or events to sell the rest of us stuff, but it often envelopes and takes over the vehicle for getting its message across.

The Olympic Games are a good example.

At one time the Olympics were an athletic event bringing together the top amateur athletes of the world in competition. They were great stuff, particularly during those wonderful days of the Cold War.

The Olympics during those decades were more than some mere international athletic festival. They served as the ultimate battleground in the ongoing conflict between the forces of Good -- the United States and its allies -- and the dominions of Evil -- the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact countries, not to mention Jim McKay and the rest of the ABC Wide World of Sports commentators.

Sadly, the lines between the Eastern and Western blocks have faded; they're selling Big Macs in the Kremlin; and ABC is out of the Olympics-broadcasting business.

Once the games stopped being about conflict between mortal enemies, the various hatchets between nations were buried. Shortly thereafter, however, the hatchets were dug up, melted down into commemorative Olympic pins and sold for a 500 percent profit.

Even the old tradition which reserved the Olympics for amateur athletes has mostly vanished. Only mostly vanished because no one has yet figured out a solid marketing scheme for an American Dream Team in synchronized swimming.

The Olympic Games are no longer about athletics, national pride or the competitive spirit; they are about sponsorships.

For a sum of money, which, if used for good instead of advertising, could ensure that every resident of some downtrodden, Third World nation had a Coke and a smile (or at least a glass of bacteria-free water and a moderate grin), companies can become the Official Whatever of the 1996 Olympic Games.

What exactly is so cool about being an Official Whatever is not completely clear. In many cases the concept is quite contradictory as some of the products being pushed -- particularly eats and drinks -- are so bad for most carbon-based lifeforms that Olympic-caliber athletes won't come within 1,500 meters of the stuff unless protected by lead-lined radiation suits.

On Memorial Day the marketing machine that is the Olympics strikes close to home as the Olympic torch winds its way through the Cape Girardeau area on its journey across the nation to the games in Atlanta.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance for area residents to see the Olympic flame -- ignited from the mother flame in Olympia, Greece. Something to tell the grandkids about.

At least that is what the fine people in the Coca-Cola Co.'s marketing division would like us to think.

However, this whole torch-running business is nothing more than an elaborate Coke commercial; the torch-bearers simply willing pawns of an advertising campaign.

Of course there is nothing wrong with that. Many people have done much worse and less enjoyable things in the name of product enhancement.

One wonders if the city is getting a kickback for allowing the Coke people to hang advertising banners all over town. If money is to be made, the city is entitled to a cut.

The Olympics have degenerated into a marketing vehicle but they still teach one valuable lesson about modern athletics: It's not whether you win or lose but how much money you make through merchandising.

Marc Powers is a member of the Southeast Missourian news staff.