Thanks Oprah. We give you one job — drop by Denmark with the O-Team and use your magic to bring the 2016 Olympics to Chicago. One job! And what happens? We get eliminated in the first goddamn round of voting. Somehow Tokyo beat us out for third place despite the fact that they planned to fund the Games by expanding the scope of their dolphin-hunting industry to encompass all adorable marine life.

With power like Oprah’s there’s no excuse for that. From what I understand, she invented literature, the hybrid car and Sporcle. She has more money than all of South America combined and employs a personal army of 5,000 troops. But when we needed her the most, she couldn’t even convince a few old fat Europeans to give Chicago the Olympics. Did no one tell her these people accept bribes? She can give away cars and scented body lotion to hundreds of middle-aged women but she can’t butter up a view International Olympic Committee voters with some cold hard cash? Poor effort Oprah, I expected more from you.

But when you think about it, Chicago was a long shot. Not even the O-Team had a chance to raise it from the dead. Considering that the U.S. just had a Summer Olympics in 1996, (which, by the way, culminated in a domestic terrorist attack by a “pro-life” activist) only the blindest of nationalists would have given Chicago a real shot. But this is America, blind nationalism abounds. We deserved the Olympics over Rio and Tokyo and Madrid not because of any practical advantages, but because we’re America goddamnit. What does Rio really have to offer anyways? Besides beautiful women in thongs and miles of beaches and postcard-level scenery, that is.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the Rio Olympics are going to take the idea of spectacle to a new level. Combine the 2016 Rio Games with the 2014 World Cup also being held in Brazil, and you’ve got what will be the largest-scale drunken blackout in human history. Brazilians are going to wake up in 2017 and think, “Wait, why am I three years older than I was yesterday and what are all these babies doing in my bedroom?” Nothing will get done in that country for three entire years — someone could invade and no one would notice.

Bottom line: We’re not looking at another Summer Games in the good ol’ U.S. of A until at least 2020. That’s unacceptable. We dominate these things, we smack around every other country in the world in legitimate sports (yeah, keep counting doubles ping pong as a sport China, see how far that gets you), the least they could do is let us pile up the golds on our own soil.

So, how I see it, we have two options — we can either hold our own Olympics (which isn’t as much fun as it sounds considering we don’t get to embarrass France in event after event after event, plus we don’t want Texas getting too cocky), or we can do the sensible thing and steal the 2012 Olympics from London.

That’s no typo. London really gets to host the Summer Olympics in three years. What a joke. The only sport those fish-and-chips-eating freaks can win a gold medal in is quidditch.

Who’s even going to ignite the Olympic Cauldron for the Brits? Dame Judy Dench? Simon Cowell? The GEICO Gecko? What an embarrassment to the entire endeavor of athletics.

So, here’s the plan: We print up a couple trillion bucks American and give it to the UK, and in exchange they cancel the Olympics a few months before they were supposed to start due to, “construction delays.” (The Fed is already printing up billions and giving it to those douchebag former-AEM majors over at Goldman Sachs, we might as well get something for ruining the value of the dollar.)

Then, while everyone is freaking out because there’s not going to be an Olympics, Obama swoops in and becomes the hero by hosting the Games right in his backyard, Chi-town baby!

And we’ll rejoice because we’ll have finally returned to relevancy. AMERICA BACK FROM THE DEAD, the headlines will read. We’ll have dragged ourselves out of the sewer. The Games will be a great symbol of America’s return to form after a decade-long lapse. Our institutions will no longer be broken, our government will run smoothly and confidently, our schools will be a great nurturing force, we will once again be steaming toward a more perfect union, perfectly adorned with gold medals.

Tony Manfred is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He may be reached at tmanfred@cornellsun.com. The Absurdity Exhibition appears alternate Tuesdays this semester.