British PM Brown to miss Beijing Olympics

But don't call it a boycott because then the communist government that gladly provides the world with cheap stuff might get angry and we would never want that. Only China can criticize other countries but we're not allowed to criticize them or else they will force western countries to go elsewhere to find cheap labor orchestrated by a wealthy dictatorship. S

o when did this big tradition of world leaders attending the Olympics actually start? I don't recall them tripping over each other to attend in the past but then again, the Olympics stopped being interesting to me when it became all about the corporate sponsorships and the doping and the every two years. Have this many presidents and prime ministers always attended?