A Sordid Spectacle

     I suppose I should confess something before I continue typing. I don't watch too much of the Olympics anymore. The whole thing lost me when they started using professionals for the basketball games. I understand the rest of the world was using quasi-professionals, but that was the fun of it all, wasn't it? I mean, our college kids went toe-to-toe with every other country and their adult/professional rosters, and our boys would usually win every Olympiad...well, except for that debacle in 1972 when the whole thing was rigged for the Soviet Union. But the cold dish of vengeance was served up in 1980 when the AMATEUR U.S. hockey team beat the Soviet Union, which was arguably the greatest collection of talent on hockey skates in a long, long time...if not ever, in what was the greatest upset in the history of sports. But as time went on the dominance waned, and before you knew it international basketball parity had arrived. Our youngsters could no longer dominate. Enter the The Dream Team in 1992 with Jordan, Bird, et al. (because the gods forbid we lose to the rest of the world in basketball!), and it kind of lost its innocence for me, all over again. All over again, Boss? Yes, Sancho. The innocence was first and tragically lost that same fateful year of 1972 when the Palestinians massacred 11 Israeli athletes in Munich, Germany, after they infiltrated the Olympic Village, killing two and then nine others later on at the airport. Why does it seem like we keep coming back to the Middle East...and much too often? Anyway, since the professionals took over, I was done.

    That said, leave it to the Olympics, that self-proclaimed "We Are The World" event that is supposed to bring humanity together, blah, blah, blah...blah, blah. It seems, although I did not see it live...just the millions of reruns...that a parade of transvestites and others did a parody of The Last Supper, which is mentioned four separate times in the New Testament (or the Belated Testament, as I like to call it). However, when most people hear the words, "The Last Supper", the first thing they think of is Leonardo DaVinci's rendering of it, which is one of the most famous works of art ever created. 

    Ignoring the general vulgarity of it, this parody of the The Last Supper would have been more than enough to convince any Islamist that the West was ripe for the taking, and would have convinced many ordinary Muslims that Islam would never, EVER, descend to this. Cultural decay can hardly go further. And let me be clear: No matter what one thinks of Christianity or Judaism, they are bedrocks, for good and ill, of Western Civilization/Culture.

    Thomas Jolly, the Opening Ceremony's artistic director, said he was shocked by criticism of his production, doubtless because he, and people of his ilk, live in a cultural bubble. (Really, Mr. Jolly? Shocked? Maybe you're the idiot.) He also said that it was intended to be a celebration of diversity, inclusion, and tolerance…(you know the script by now). "I want this ceremony to include everyone. We must all celebrate this diversity." (Note the connection of what he wanted, to what people must do and feel.) He also noted that France has no blasphemy laws - which is true - and that he wanted to demonstrate and celebrate the nation's freedom and devotion to rights. Well, now.

    This is further proof that public messaging should not be left to members of the modern artistic elite, due to their limited capacity for connected thought. Mr. Jolly doesn't seem to read the local papers, or maybe he just ignored them. Because if he had read just one of them, it would not have escaped him that more people in France had just voted for the conservative Rassemblement National party than for any other political party in the recent national elections. Tell me, like I'm a six-year-old, how were those voters to be included, let alone celebrated, in his production? 

    It also is not true that France is some utopian haven for freedom of speech. In fact, it is a crime there to deny the Holocaust or the Armenian genocide, or to write or broadcast racist commentary - or commentary deemed racist; which, of course, is NOT always the same thing. Intelligent people can debate whether or not these laws should exist, but that is beside the point. They do exist in France, which means that freedom of speech is limited in practice.

    Jolly also made no distinction between freedom and the rightfulness of exercising it in any form whatsoever, or in any circumstance, whatsoever. Look, I am of the opinion that NO blasphemy laws should exist and that if someone wants to put on a shallow, adolescent show like this one in some theater, and he or she could find people to attend it, AND pay to see it...have at it. I'm all for it. I mean, if there were blasphemy laws here in the U.S., I’d have been beheaded years ago. Plus, we are not a theocracy. But, and there's always a "BUT”. What is acceptable for a private theater is not always suitable for public display, especially if it is to stand as a quasi-official representation of the entire nation...for the whole world to see. As a professor of mine once said when I was being my snarky self back in college..."There are distinctions to be made and discriminations to be exercised."

    Again, I did not see this event live. However, it was clearly evident, for me anyway, in all the replays I watched, that the cowardice was clear. Let's say that Jolly had proposed to represent the Kaaba (the stone building at the center of Islam's holiest shrine in Mecca) surrounded by prancing transvestite worshippers, or better yet, Muhammad himself dressed as a woman! Would he have been allowed to do that on the grounds that in France, all is permitted? And do you think that the difference would have gone unnoticed by Islamists in particular and Muslims in general? And do I need to tell any of you the shit-storm that would have followed? I didn't think so. 

    Look, far be it from me to come to the defense of normative Christianity and Judaism, and I know that some out there will accuse me of hypocrisy, that while unfounded, is somewhat understandable. But I have spent the better part of my adult life debating my believing friends as to the existence of a supreme being or lack thereof in my case; as well as the idea that The Bible is a literary work full of wisdom, myths, and stories (albeit great myths and stories), as opposed to it being a literal, theological and religious work. Having said that, I believe, with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, that Jolly and his team had no intention of putting on a performance of unity or a celebration of humanity. It was another shot across the bow, as it were, in the so-called Culture Wars, and more specifically, as anti-Christian as it gets. And as much as that "war" bores me most of the time...when it is televised to the entire world as part of a so-called unity celebration...that raises the stakes a little. And this hate-filled “performance”, if it can be called that, deserves the scrutiny it is receiving.

    Being an ideological multiculturalist, Mr. Jolly and his ilk are unable to think about how others might think or feel because others must think or feel as he does. To adopt Fyodor Dostoyevsky's wonderful line from his great novel, The Possessed: "Starting from absolute diversity, I arrive at absolute uniformity." Here endeth the lesson. 

write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com