There’s a lot wrong with just about everything in our world these days. With instant world wide communication available to everyone, any public statement, act or event is subject to observation, criticism, condemnation and even praise, all of which can circle the globe before your next breath.
Take the Olympics, for example.
The last summer games in China put on one of the most mechanically perfect performances in history. It pretty much defined biggest, flashiest, noisiest, most coordinated and most – well, Chinese.
Today, in London, we are likely to see something a bit different. Olympian to be sure but with the inevitable British twist. Personally, I couldn’t give a cracked farthing about the games. It’s all about money, folks. The athletes themselves are little more than pawns in the exercise which will bring billions into the pockets of the media, promoters, sponsors, vendors, restaurant operators and innkeepers.
The assembled athletes represent the top of what the human organism can achieve given a combination of ability, training, money, desire and luck. If it were not for the carnival, commercialism and self promotion of the media it would be appealing. Of course, I speak only for myself.
We can only hope that the Brits can pull it off with some style and twinkle. I can not say it as well as the Washington Post put it this morning – specially when quoting the words of Jon Plowman:
“Come on, this is Britain. We’re not going to do thousands of marching Chinese,” said Jon Plowman, executive producer of the BBC show “Twenty Twelve.” “There’s just something about the British character that isn’t good at getting all excited about something like the Olympics. You have this thing in America of being all gung-ho and saying, ‘Oh, this is going to be great,’ and ‘Yes, we can.’ But we’re not like that. We say, ‘Well, yes, we might. It rather depends on the weather.’ ”
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