The Summer Olympics are here! Yay! The Olympics, especially the summer ones, have become so commercialized, politicized and oversold, on so many levels, that it is hard in some respects to get too excited about them. That said, there is still a powerful beauty and lure in the physical prowess of the athletes, the competition, the joinder of nations from around the globe, the spectacle and the always awesome pageantry of the opening and closing ceremonies. To whatever extent the games ever had “purity”, there is much less of it now; but there is still a lot of sporting, and viewing, value.
Not long from the posting of this article (well it will be two full hours for me and those on the west coast, which is totally bullshit), the opening ceremonies will commence. We Yanks in the States cannot of course, due to the fucking craven greed of NBC, see the opening ceremonies live. If that were the only unmitigated greed by NBC and the other purveyors of the Olympics.
I have always loved the opening and closing ceremonies. One of the most beautiful things I have ever seen was the closing of the 1994 winter Olympics at Lillehammer, with the moving tribute to Sarajevo by lamplight in the dark. Powerful stuff. As was the simply incredible, even if long, opening ceremony in Beijing last time around. I have seen a little of the gig on a bootleg feed from London; it is good, but nowhere near the over the top opulence of Beijing and some of the others. I am anxious to hear what you all think, and let this be a forum for just that, and all other things Olympic.
There are also a few other notes to be made. America’s own Borat, Mittens Romney, brilliantly blurted out that London was not ready for the Olympic experience and that such was “disconcerting”:
Thursday was supposed to be the easy day, when Mitt Romney would audition as a world leader here by talking about his shared values with the heads of the United States’ friendliest ally.
Instead, the Republican presidential candidate insulted Britain as it welcomed the world for the Olympics by casting doubt on London’s readiness for the Games, which open Friday, saying that the preparations he had seen were “disconcerting” and that it is “hard to know just how well it will turn out.”
The comments drew a swift rebuke from Prime Minister David Cameron and, by day’s end, a public tongue-lashing by the city’s mayor as the Olympic torch arrived in Hyde Park.
“I hear there’s a guy called Mitt Romney who wants to know whether we’re ready,” Mayor Boris Johnson cried out to a crowd of at least 60,000. “He wants to know whether we’re ready. Are we ready? Are we ready? Yes, we are.”
Cameron, responding to the candidate with a note of irritation, said that “of course it’s easier if you hold an Olympic Games in the middle of nowhere,” an apparent reference to Salt Lake City. That city held the 2002 Olympic Winter Games, which Romney organized. The prime minister and the mayor are conservatives, making their scolding all the more embarrassing for the candidate, an otherwise sympathetic ideological ally.
Gots to love the Brits for giving Romney the stiff upper lip. Mittens is truly the American Borat. At best. At this point, it is fair to say they loathe Mittens. But there is not just loathing out and about in London town, there is fear too.
The fear in London is of, what else, terrorism. And it is not an unfounded fear either. England, but London particularly, is a very integrated and multi-cultural place. I found Jason Whitlock’s thoughts compelling:
There is less fear in England, and perhaps that is why I’m scared.
The threat of terrorism never leaves my mind.
The locals promise rain is inevitable here. The idyllic setting we’ve enjoyed in the days leading up to Friday night’s opening ceremony will be disturbed by the reality of London’s relentless summer drizzle, the locals swear.
The world’s tumult is relentless here, too. It is, perhaps, just as inevitable that these Olympic Games will be touched by terrorism. London is not isolated. You can fly from the Middle East to Heathrow Airport in less than five hours. London’s great strength, its diversity, makes it easy for extremists to hide in the open.
But the fear of terrorism is not just in London, is it? We in the States have just been touched by the suffocating force of that in Aurora Colorado. Where does crime end, and terrorism begin?
Weighty questions, and questions the American Borat, Mitt Romney, has not, and will never, answer. Romney is a two faced, say anything, flim flammer of the highest order. In terms of personal intellectual and moral honesty, Mitt Romney makes Barack Obama look like the proverbial George Washington by the cherry tree as told by Parson Weems.
If Mitt Romney thinks the acknowledgement and preparedness of Britain and London is “disconcerting”, what the hell does he think is going on in the United States with the false flag security theater and Congressional ignorance of the degradation of American privacy and liberty that is being fraudulently accomplished by the security state in the name of the citizenry?
If even the leaders of the Congressional Intelligence Committees don’t have a clue, what in the world does Mitt Romney think he knows? What do the rest of us know? If London, with enough cameras, microphones, and prying eyes to make the NSA jealous, is so insecure that a tough guy mope like Jason Whitlock is afraid, and has terror on his mind, where are we here in the States?
So, there you have the fear, loathing, beauty and greed. All manifesting themselves before even the start of the opening ceremonies. It is a wondrously awesome, and somewhat distasteful, thing all at once.
But, for the moment, the opening ceremonies are magnificent. Enjoy and discuss!
[American Borat, by the way, is the work product of two of this blog’s most awesome friends: Twolf as artist, and Watertiger’s “Dependable Renegade” as publisher. We love both as if they were our own]