Sportsy Talk: Olympics Update!

Mitt Romney, former head of bribery-ridden Salt Lake City Olympics 2002, started off his Big World Diplomacy Tour (Three Whole Other Countries!) by pissing off his first hosts so much that the Prime Minister of England dissed him in public. Score!

Just because the London Games have involved social cleansing, Brand Police,  a ban on fish and chips without the fish, strikes, threatened strikes, security failures, rooftop rocket launchers, a battleship in the Thames, official mascots with security camera eyes that “record everything,"  a logo that looks like a sex act, the worst font ever of the 21st Century, empty seats, insulting flags, inappropriate remarks about beach volleyball, and badminton scandals, it doesn’t mean they’re not, you know, well-organized.

Then there was the Opening Ceremony. You’d think Mittens would have liked that Opening Ceremony, with its salute to the Poors Who Knew Their Place back in the England of the Industrial Revolution. The part he probably would not have liked was the part we didn’t get to see here in the US—the tribute to the victims of the 7/7 attacks. London won the right to host the 2012 Olympics on July 6, 2005, and on the next day terrorists detonated four bombs on London subways and a bus, killing 52 non-terrorists and wounding 700. The two events are linked in people’s minds, and the ceremony featured a moving version of the hymn “Abide with Me” sung by Emeli Sande, and a dance choreographed by Akram Khan. I couldn’t figure out why NBC cut this part of the program to run some stupid interview with Ryan Seacrest and Michael Phelps—which they reran the other night!— because I thought the point of American news media was to keep us in a constant state of fear about terrorism, and wouldn’t a tribute to terror victims help with that? But then the next day NBC said they cut the tribute because it “wasn’t tailored for the US audience.” So now I know that the main goal of American media isn’t to keep us frightened, it’s to keep us ignorant.

Here's the censored part of the ceremony:

 

And here's London Mayor Boris Johnson welcoming you to the Olympics!

 

Comments

[sdr]

And remember too, friends, 9/11 was an inside job...

[David Cameron]

Is the Prime Minister of England the same Prime Minister of the United Kingdom?

[Ligia Doan]

This week, WFMU launched into silent fundraiser mode.