No choice in this country but to watch it via Katie and
The fire-turning-into-Olympic-rings was neato. Check it out, from the Athens 2004 page:
The parade of plastic people was also very cool. Why wasn't ATHOC president Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki among them? (Sorry, cheap shot, she's an otherwise attractive woman and I admire anyone whose surname is harder to handle than Wechsler-Chaput, but I think she'd project her warmth much better without such a tightened face.)
Best outfits: Brazil, Germany and Tajikistan; runners-up Kazakstan, Kenya, Morocco, Mexico, Poland and Togo.
Best accessory: The French delegation's two-sided flags, with the French flag on one side and the Greek on the other.
How faked was that applause during the US delegation's entrance? As Robin put it, "they pumped up the Macy's." On the other hand, the (much louder) cheers with which the crowd greeted the Iraqis sounded genuine. Spain, Cuba and Palestine all received terrific hands when they entered. I think the Greeks were more polite to the Turks than to Israel, which I thought got a tepid reception - moments after the Stylized Heads chirruped about how all the countries were getting the same warm welcome.
(Kinda hypocritical considering NBC certainly didn't give equivalent time to every country. Hey folks, we know these ceremonies actually happened hours ago and are on tape, why not see if you can actually fit all the countries in? I know you have to truncate a bit, but the way you've chosen to do it seems rather dismissive and, I dunno, provincial.)
Israel's entrance also allowed the SH's to pontificate again about security (did you know Israel gets extra?), which I thought they'd laid to rest after bringing it up twice, once each during the first two Arab countries' entrances.
Seeing the Korean athletes marching together always chokes me up.
Hey, it's Castro's birthday today, who knew? The SH's actually paired that with the Friday-the-13th thing to try to cement the association in our minds of, I dunno, Fidel with bad luck. They don't seem to get that not everyone in the world has the Friday-the-13th superstition.
I wish the Bob-blehead would stop the pithy "this country is associated with this cultural thing we figure Americans know about" commentary. Morocco comes on, you have to mention the movie Casablanca. Malta, there's the "joke" about the Falcon. What's with the Bogie fixation? And while I can understand telling Americans about which countries some familiar atheletes hail from, my jaw dropped at his comment about mentioning Mariano Rivera when the Panamanians came out because it sounded better than talking about Noriega. Guess he forgot about the Canal, or has that become too culturally obscure for us now?
Why did the jackets on the Romanian women's costumes have the design of half a target on each side? Lantzman, is there something I should know? And those white Russian hats? Look good on some, not so good on others. Relieved to see that so far I've noticed only the US and Canadian delegations shilling for Roots, and the clothing is really blah too.
Bob actually got a lot of truth out about Saudi Arabia during their delegation's entrance. I'm glad he's making something of a note about how many women are and aren't in some of these countries' delegations. Zero in the Saudis', big surprise. And you know what? It's something of an achievement to have women marching in these Olympic delegations; it'll be even more of one when they can do things like vote, drive, move about unescorted...
A little creepy how Katie made sure to emphasize the word Arab when discussing the genocide in Sudan, strengthening that "Arab = evil" association even though I can think of a lot of non-Arab peoples who have also practiced genocide in recent decades.
The Greek guys kissing the cameras - cute or just way too goofy? Jury's still out on that one...
As we head into the home stretch, here's your Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum):
0 comments:
Post a Comment