Hot Naked Greek Brotherly Love

More in Philly-gazing news: the Philadelphia Daily News's cover story is on Philly's not inconsiderable chances of winning the bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics.

From the article:

• Let's play ball: Who can argue with a region where so much is already in place? The sports complex offers a great opportunity to consolidate, and the Navy Yard offers the kinds of acreage that could handle an Olympic Village and track and field stadium. Then there's Franklin Field and the Palestra, a number of universities with new facilities, plus the Convention Center and Fairmount Park. And what better test of an Olympic cyclist or triathlete than the Manayunk Wall?

• A TV network's dream: With sites recently in Nagano, Sydney, Athens and Turin, and bound for Beijing in 2008 and London in 2012, Olympics viewers have learned to do two things: Buy TiVo or learn to enjoy events on taped delay. An East Coast venue would do wonders for live TV and a subsequently bigger audience.

• Tolerable summers: OK, so the temperature does occasionally creep into the 90s. But what's the last hot spell you remember? Overall, you can't argue with a climate that's accommodating to everything from soccer to cycling to track and field.

• Great track record: OK, it's not quite on the grand scale of the Olympics, but supporters obviously were cheered by the overall grades the city received for handling Live 8 and the Republican National Convention. Both serve as a springboard to this interest in a bid for the Summer Games.

• It's Philly's time: With the 2012 Games going to London and the 2020 and the 2024 Games seemingly bound for cities in Africa and South America, the 2016 Games seem to be the USA's to lose.

So why not Philly? Will Bunch knows why:

(I)t is the rest of the world that will decide whether Philly gets the 2016 Olympics.

And the rest of the world hates America today, and probably won't like us much better when the votes are cast in 2009.

Our Olympic hopes are dead on arrival -- and for once it's not even Philadelphia's fault. It's those clowns 130 miles to the south of us.

But even still, let's look at the bright side -- Philadelphia hasn't had this kind of optimism since Ed Rendell was mayor back in the 1990s -- and then, it was really an optimism of last resort. When Philadelphia doesn't feel itself to be personally hated by the rest of the world, and when Philadelphians, including the Philly's snarkiest news blogger, can't even really muster up the energy to hate themselves, you know things are looking up... Or the end is near.