Hardly seems like the same guy........
Posted on 07/30/2012 8:12:04 AM PDT by shortstop
Actually, London, your opening ceremony was atrocious.
It was horrific.
It was a deeply troubling insight into a once-great nation.
I recognize that, in the grand scheme of things, the opening ceremony of the summer Olympics doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. Probably, the summer Olympics themselves don’t have any true significance.
After all, it’s just sports, and most of them are obscure sports.
But they are entertaining nonetheless, and we look forward to them each four years, and we enjoy the spectacle as much as we enjoy the competition.
Which is why on Friday night we lined our families up in front of the television set to see how London would open its season in the sun. Years of preparation, millions in expenses, thousands of volunteers.
The world convened happily in anticipation of the pure enjoyment of love of country and honest competition. Thankful for the every-four-year effort to out do previous the Olympiad, we were eager to see what the Brits would do to try to outshine the Chinese.
And it was a complete flop.
It was a stunning, enraging, insane flop.
Probably few things have been done in the history of England which have so damaged the kingdom’s esteem in the mind of the public.
Americans have the belief that, somehow, Brits are more educated, articulate and refined than most.
Those beliefs went down in quick flames Friday night, as the opening ceremony morphed into a sad commentary on the cultural decay of Great Britain.
Supposedly intended to highlight the fundamental strengths of British history and character, the spectacle instead reeked of ignorance and entitlement.
If anyone wondered why and how the British empire fell, the buffoonery of Friday night offers some pretty good insights.
It also offered a chagrining contrast between the precision of the Beijing opening ceremonies and the mindless meandering of the London opening ceremonies.
China had choreography, China had spectacle, China had vast quantities of people who could perform with computer-like precision.
London had an insane storyline through which many earnestly but pointlessly drifted. It left the world surprised at the cultural stupidity of the people of the British isles.
One of the purposes of an Olympics opening ceremony is to give the world a chance to see the culture and accomplishments of the host country.
Unfortunately, the people who wrote the London opening ceremony have no grasp of the culture and accomplishments of the British people.
For example, the opening ceremony focused on England’s children’s writers and its socialized medicine system.
Let me repeat that. England has the world’s attention. Perhaps a billion people around the globe are turned in.
And we get “A Hundred and one Dalmations” and the nationalized medical system that pretty much ensures people needing surgery will either have to do without, wait months to be seen, or travel to America for care.
This is the country of Shakespeare, Dickens and the Magna Carta. The nation whose colonial system left footprints of democracy across the globe. The birthplace of English common law which to this day provides the foundation of most legitimate legal systems.
It was England which first opened the door to political liberty.
And it was England which stood alone so long against Nazi Germany.
One of the most noble and noteworthy civilizations on earth and they do a parachuting-queen stunt that seems right out of a season finale of “Survivor.” Some indecipherable parade of people in old clothes, various strained efforts at political correctness, and a nightmare sequence with dancing doctors and prancing nurses was neither entertaining nor honest.
Because, contrary to the impression left by the Olympic opening ceremony, the British people are not idiots and their history is not insignificant. The ceremonies were trifling, but England is not.
And it’s unfortunate the opening ceremony didn’t make that point.
The English have given us the language of the modern era. They define our time and they paved the way to our liberties and our literature. The British empire left a string of former colonies that are among the modern world’s freest and most prosperous.
The English people, with the Scots and the Irish, are great.
But the fools who made the Olympic opening ceremony seemed oblivious to that fact. They seemed intent on nothing short of embarrassing the British.
And boring the world.
The Olympic opening ceremonies sucked.
And the jokers who put them on should be embarrassed.
Why didn’t she also open the Sydney Games?
I’dda like ta seen some British Sterling and English Leather and some Crown Jewels to boot.
I don't watch these Olympic things (haven't since the '70's), but I wish I'd have seen that. Reminds me of a Pink Floyd concert I went to during my misspent youth.
I thought I might like it when they started with a pastoral landscape and boy choirs - love choir music and the English are the best in the world at it. But when the smokestacks were raised I was like, if you’re going to raise a tower 100 feet above the ground, why make it a dirty smokestack belching smoke - two of them.
The Olympics.
60 years ago a gathering of amateur athletes from various nations to compete in sporting events.
Today. Professional athletes, athletes sponsored by medical labs, athletes taken from families by governments and trained for years gathering to promote various idealologies and lifestyles and to waste BILLIONS of dollars while doing so...
My gripe about the Olympics opening begins before the opening ceremony. NBC showed a summary piece that contained shots of England and probably every single olympic sport. Each shot was maybe one second long. Fast motion, slow motion, the sport shots were chopped before their climax. For instance, a dive was shown up to the point of leaving the platform, then it was chopped.
The opening ceremony also had a lot of cutaways to recorded footage taken around England. This is cheap and artless. The Queen lowered herself to be in the skit with James Bond.
I agree that the opening ceremony as a whole was strange indeed. All the way up to singing Hey Jude.
Ah . . . the Elizabethan Black Adder. One of the funniest television shows ever was the Elizabethan Adder episode with Hugh Laurie as the Evil Prince Ludwig, Master of Disguise.
Well, I imagine it went like this: The National Health Service offered them a LOT of money, but in return they had to choreograph a commercial for them and dance it out on the field. Also, I think they might have been keying off that hospital in the States that did that huge choreographed dance arrangement, all volunteer, that went viral on you tube. Because they said the dancing doctors and nurses were real medico volunteers.
Olympics...Boring as hell!...It’s all about globalism puke!
Don’t worry the same elitist bastards dished it out at home as well, the violence was all-inclusive. No one was safe from ‘The Establishment’.
"Jallianwala Bagh "
Reginald E.H. Dyer was removed from duty and forced to retire. He became a celebrated hero in Britain among people with connections to the British Raj.(The Establishment). The massacre caused a reevaluation of the Army's role in which the new policy became minimum force, and the Army was retrained and developed suitable tactics such as crowd control. Historians considered the episode as a decisive step towards the end of British rule in India.
Remember that line from “The Jerk”: “You wanna wait around for an oven mitt?”
I had that moment watching Olympic gymnastics in the early 80’s. I wondered what the heck I was doing watching something so boring. That was the beginning of the end for me, and it came rapidly.
I dumped TV in 1997 which means I see NO Olympic ads. I don’t get sucked into the marketing and it makes it easy for me to figure out they are going on just as they come to an end.
And that is a good thing.
Hardly seems like the same guy........
I imagine the organizers decided not to invite her. She does not have to open the games and in the case of Sydney 2000 her representative the Governor General opened the games. Also Melbourne 1956 only Phil showed up. For Calgary 1988 and Vancouver 2010 the GGs at the time opened the games. Curiously for Montreal in 1976 the separatist opposition leader for the Quebec legislature sent a letter to the Queen asking her not to come to open the games but since he had no standing she opened the games because she had been invited to. She has a history of doing her duty even in the face of opposition.
Cheerleaders and pickups is all I recall from that disappointment.
How did Bob feel about all the opening fakery of the Bejing games?
I wish they did what Athens did with their history segment.
That was mesmerizing and dignified.
I'll say.
I DID see a suspended pink pig in the air over London when they were doing one of their helo fly-by tour thingees.
I LOVE that the Olys are in London - I’ve been there twicet, love the City. I feel very safe and at home there. The ceremonies were vulgar, but they, I suppose, figgered it’s FOR the vulgate, so by all means make it as vulgar as possible.
Worst. Opening. Ever.
It was all psyops propoganda. Dirty smoke stacks, ghouls chasing kids in hospital beds...it could have represented a great history, but the PC crowd took over
Hey, I’m an old fuddy duddy, but I agree, the opening ceremonies were horrific. The writer of this article makes the mistake of referring to Great Britain as “England”...a pet peeve of mine. Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales comprise Great Britain and it should be referred to as such, not as England. This half baked, nonsensical ceremony was held in England, the country is Great Britain. When the author further remarks Scotland, England and Ireland make the country great, he totally omits Wales, which must peeve the Welsh. How did the Queen get talked into the buffoonery of “parachuting in”, bloomers and all, even in jest, I felt was an indignity. I admire the Queen, she should neither laugh at herself, or permit others to,if she intends the monarchy to survive. In earlier times, such a spoof would have resulted in “off with their heads”. OK...yield the soapbox for now.
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