Jonathan Kay nails one of the main reasons why the Olympics hold no interest for me in a piece at the National Post:
Oh, and it turns out the lip-sync wasn't the only fraudulent thing about the opening ceremonies. The purportedly spectacular fireworks broadcast for the world's benefit were cobbled together with digital video effects --a cheap Hollywood trick that's as phony as Lin Miaoke's rendition of Ode to the Motherland.
In fact, Beijing itself has been turned into a sort of giant shrine to phoniness.
Three-metre high "culture walls" have been erected in front of shabby neighbourhoods, to block tourists' view of the undesirables. In other cases, crumbling buildings have been hastily covered with phony facades. All of Beijing's female meeters and greeters are pretty things in their 20s. In China's Potemkin world, surrounding tourists with women who are young and hot -- oops, sorry, I mean "flawless in image, internal feeling and expression" -- is very much "in the national interest."
This year's Olympics in Beijing truly are a show about nothing.
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