Western critics of Russia’s Sochi Winter Olympics have picked up too much speed and risk skidding off piste. A justifiable attempt to scrutinise the government of President Vladimir Putin has degenerated into an exercise in schadenfreude and ill will. Politicians who have decided to attend the games (including China’s Xi Jinping, Japan’s Shinzo Abe and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan) have been level-headed. Those who have ostentatiously stayed away – the UK’s David Cameron, Barack Obama of the US and France’s Fran?ois Hollande – are following what the critic Harold Rosenberg once called “the herd of independent minds”.
俄羅斯索契冬奧會的西方批評者有點過火，有超出合理程度的危險。審視弗拉基米爾?普京(Vladimir Putin)政府行為的正當努力，已淪為幸災樂禍和不懷好意的舉動。決定出席開幕式的政治人物（包括中國的習近平、日本的安倍晉三(Shinzo Abe)，以及土耳其的雷杰普?塔伊普?埃爾多安(Recep Tayyip Erdogan)）是頭腦冷靜的人，而那些故意缺席的領導人——英國的戴維?卡梅倫(David Cameron)、美國的巴拉克?奧巴馬(Barack Obama)和法國的弗朗索瓦?奧朗德(Fran?ois Hollande)——則是在追隨評論家哈羅德?羅森堡(Harold Rosenberg)所說的“獨立思想的羊群”。