Posted on 08/26/2008 8:25:20 AM PDT by arbooz
As Britain's magnificent Olympians returned home on Monday, they left behind a fierce debate in China over London's eight-minute contribution to Beijing's glittering ceremony - and in particular, the performance of Mayor Boris Johnson. While some Chinese media and bloggers praised the creativity of London's segment, others were damning with Johnson described as 'arrogant, rude and disrespectful' when accepting the Olympic flag. There were mixed opinions too about the cameo performance featuring a London bus, David Beckham, singer Leona Lewis, rock guitarist Jimmy Page, dancers and singers which was very different from the rest of the spectacular show staged by the hosts.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Two Words: Screw China.
Memo to China:
This is how the rest of the world exists....in freedom.
The Chinese don’t realize that you have to be an idiot to
be mayor of London,nowadays.I don’t want to criticize their
closing ceremony, but it looked lika a scene from Dante’s
Inferno.
I thought that was Chris Mathews! He did have a tingle running up his leg when he got the flag!
My wife and I stopped watching the Olympics after we realized that the Chinese were going to cheat and get away with it...
I wish I had known Jimmy Page was going to be in the closing ceremonies, I would have tuned in...
You did not miss much - it was short and not pretty.
LOL. Yep, straight up his arse! He looked drunk out of his mind...
'If you dress informally or not properly, it can be seen as disrespect to the host.'
'When he was stepping to the stage and down, he put his hand in the pocket of his jacket. This shows he was extremely casual, he did not seem to take this occasion seriously.'
'After he took over the Olympic flag, he simply passed it to the Chinese standard-bearer. He was the only person who took the flag with one hand. his is very disrespectful to the Olympic flag.'
lol...the Cheatin' Chinamen are a little uptight.
Tush..just because he made a comment that “ping-pong” was coming home in 2012 - a not so veiled reference to the chinese domination in a British invented game. So what? What are they complaining about? Table-tennis DID originate in Britain, it has often vulgarly called ping-pong and China DID win all twelve of the medals that were up for grabs in the event...
I think its rude that the chinese are pointing it out.
Boris was NOT drunk...that is his normal way. He is like that all of the time.
TWELVE medals were given out in ping pong? That’s more than basketball, tennis, volleyball, and water polo combined. No wonder the Chinese piled up the gold.
Thank God it wasn’t “Red Ken” up there.
And China, consider it payback for Britain handing you Hong Kong.
You couldn't get ten or twenty thousand Brits or Americans to bang on drums and grunt in unison, to hang from giant flying cheese wheels, or to pretend to be a huge gas log if your lives depended on it.
We have our problems but so far we've avoided your ant farm approach to society and Potemkin Village concept of entertaining foreigners.
The bus thing was a tad silly but London's red buses are a world recognized symbol (unlike neon encrusted birds nests...stick with the wall). I have to agree with you on the singer and guitar guy, I'd have gone with "Rule Britannia" and some play on British marine uniforms from, oh, say, the Boxer Rebellion.
As a final suggestion, since you enjoy absurd theater, gaudy symbols, and nonsensical chanting; you might enjoy the democrat convention this week. It's not quite as censored as your show was.
Well said!
Bravo!
And, did they mention, our gymnasts have curves?
Thanks
Those are the qualities I appreciate in people. The Brits have produced a plethora of great comedians, but the conservatives have been lacking recently.
Excellent idea!!! The Chinese would of threw a fit.
Kind of embarrassing, IMHO.
lol
"Watching Missus Messiah last night I got to thinking that the pubbies should do a five minute collage of the Chinese opening/closing ceremonies and the dem's game show stage setting:
Let the sheep see what socialism is really like and what their presumptive masters think of the constituency."
Strangely enough, the Chinese name for ping pong is ping pong.
Actually, you can. But only if they're paid for it - the way the Chinese arranged their extravaganza. Volunteers aren't going to spend the weeks or months rehearsing for this kind of stuff. It's a waste of time. And money. The Chinese government did it (out of a $60b Olympic budget) because they thought a successful Olympics would help them retain power for another 20 years, the Olympics being the circus portion of the Roman recipe for retaining power - bread and circuses.
PS: I wonder if they had to arrest the little girl who captured the soccer ball?
Separated at birth?
Have you ever watched a Hollywood movie? How much do those things cost? $100m? $200m? China spent $60b. That pays for a lot of full-time extras.
It's a myth that non-Chinese can't do this kind of stuff. We have tons of marching bands and cheerleader teams that can do synchronized stuff. And our professional dancers beat anything the Chinese can produce. What's a reality is that you are not going to get tens of thousands of unpaid volunteers to do what the Chinese performers did on a paid basis.
Boris Johnson hearts Obama.
Kinda bizarre pairing. Don't know who that chick is, but guess this dude had better things to do.
Twelve total medals, 4 golds, silver, and bronze.
For both men’s individual and team and women’s individual and team.
Basketball hands out 6, volleyball 12, tennis 12, water polo 6.
China won 8 of them: 4 gold, 2 silver, 2 bronze.
So. Korea picked up 2 brozne, and Germany and Singapore each won a silver.
That’s twelve in total...four gold, four silver, four bronze.
Chris Patten, former Governor of Hong Kong
There is a very interesting documentary series running in the UK that uncovers people’s ancestry. They did Boris last week. His grandfather was a Turkish journalist and politician who came out worse in a political struggle with “attaturk”. He was murdered in the streets of Istanbul by some angry mob.
On his mothers side Boris is a direct descendant of King George I.
Tonight, from the sublime to the ridiculous, they are doing Jerry Springer.
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