Althouse: "The most leftie opening ceremony I have ever seen - more than Beijing, the capital of a communist state! Welfare tribute next?"

July 28, 2012

"The most leftie opening ceremony I have ever seen - more than Beijing, the capital of a communist state! Welfare tribute next?"

A member of Parliament tweets.

43 comments:

chickelit said...: Blessed Are The Wealth Makers!; 7/28/12, 10:03 AM
Phil 314 said...: A fairly accurate description. Even a child "dancing" in a wheelchair.; 7/28/12, 10:07 AM
Tom Spaulding said...: As someone on Twitter noted, "I liked the part where they celebrated the sick".; 7/28/12, 10:09 AM
bagoh20 said...: Where is the socialist success to celebrate. A socialist nation that has been so successful from it's socialism that it pulls other people up from poverty around the world and did it without the U.S. either rebuilding it after war, protecting it, or providing most of it's industrial demand? Socialist countries basically survive off of the limited free enterprise they allow and that of other economies it trades with. Socialism is your 26 year old unemployed son lying on the couch watching daytime TV while you are at work. I can't see throwing him a party to thank him for it.; 7/28/12, 10:10 AM
edutcher said...: Hmmm,

I wonder if the Romster has found his running mate.

Seems like "disconcerting" turns out to be the least of it. And the tabloids have found somebody new to dump on.

PS Anyone else suspicious of a guy named Boris claiming to be English?; 7/28/12, 10:18 AM
KCFleming said...: Not as much fun without some giant papier mâché head of Dear Leader.; 7/28/12, 10:19 AM
Anonymous said...: I didn't watch it because I was forewarned by a Kyle Smith column.

Any Stakhanovite workers or hero tractor drivers?; 7/28/12, 10:37 AM
Sheridan said...: Hundreds of children, packed together like new recruits in a barracks, apparently oblivious of their pain and suffering, singing and dancing on their giant beds! Doctors and nurses, ardent, joyful, faces glistening, joining with their trapped, tiny patients in song and dance! Is this the future of treatment under Obamacare? Could a colonoscopy ever again be feared if the process incorporated such an unbridled celebration? Of course, I'd find it hard to get up and dance what with all the tubes and such stuck in my limbs and orifices. But I could hum the tunes!.; 7/28/12, 10:51 AM
Chip Ahoy said...: It's what they're proud of obviously. It is what makes them civilized.

Ta daaaaaa

Ta da da duh tadut ta daaaaaaaa

Conversely, it's what makes you uncivilized.

Ta daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

I checked into b3ta for my usual dose of satire and deep cynicism but was met instead with kindness and warmth and that feels very itchy, the vibes of the place are all wrong. Links to video preview of events and remarks like, and this really surprised me, was it satire? I was confused, "Make one proud to be British." ¿what? That sentiment runs counter to the raisin de tree xxx raison d'être of the place. And that's all there is over there right now. Except for this perfect gem. And a few redeeming others, but since the Olympics it's been positively saccharine. Plus complaints about the site going downhill. Maybe that's what they were getting at.

[the gem is tiny. Best viewed enlarged. If you cannot make it out, it is a gif in the style of smart bomb tracking video. The target, let's agree with the commenter, the thing is a golden ray of sun. And in form, to my relief, everybody gleed. ]; 7/28/12, 10:57 AM
ricpic said...: Rue Britannia

No more glory,
In fact one dare not speak of it,
No more pride, only "We're sorry,"
As once great lord declines to twit.; 7/28/12, 11:02 AM
Titus said...: Beijing Opening Ceremony-A
London Opening Ceremony-D

The hottest teams in the parade were France and Bulgaria.

tits.; 7/28/12, 11:03 AM
vet66 said...: The entire opening ceremonies were ominous and freaky. Displaying only children in the barracks of the sick and infirm is prophetic regarding what happens to the old and infirm. Where were they with their nightmares and pain? The first thing I thought of when the smelter smokestacks went up was cooking ovens for Soylent Green protein snacks, global warming be damned. The smog wafting over the crowd was sulphuric aroma therapy reminding the viewer that we will return to the bucolic fields of yesteryear and a simpler time maybe with potatoes this time around.

Doyle, architect of this monstrosity, didn't need characters from Fairie Tales he could have used the Royal family, clueless in their finery. Nice that the Queen deigned to drop in on the festivities a la James Bond's helicopter.

Who wrote this stuff? The EPA from the U.S.?; 7/28/12, 11:12 AM
jr565 said...: I don't know if it was leftist. But it certainly was crap. If by leftist they mean "gay" then I guess it was leftist. THat opening was like if you took all the dance numbers of the past 10 academy awards and combined them you'd get this monstrosity.
And they even had commentary on it as it was going on to "explain it all". Apparently there was a boy meets girl story in there and it ended somehow on the the inventor of the web (No,not Al Gore). And in between they had a bunch of songs that weren't even chronological and had nothing to do with the story they were presenting.
The one,part that was partly bearable was the Mr. Bean portion, but that was technically before the start of the big number.; 7/28/12, 11:15 AM
jr565 said...: and actually I didn't even know they had a section on the sick dancing (i had by that point thankfully moved into the kitchen to get some snacks). So I guess I would call it leftist. Leftist self indulgent crap.; 7/28/12, 11:20 AM
Lyle said...: I loved it, but the celebration of the NHS was laughable. I laughed at that part.; 7/28/12, 11:43 AM
Lyle said...: The best part was the renowned humanitarians carrying the Olympic flag and handing it to the nameless British armed services members to raise the flag.

That sums up reality just about right.

... and military display at the Olympics. Haha!; 7/28/12, 11:48 AM
Freeman Hunt said...: the celebration of the NHS was laughable. I laughed at that part

That got a laugh here as well. We couldn't believe they spelled out "NHS."

We turned it on during the Industrial Revolution part and liked how the rings were done, then it went to that children's hospital business and into the child's nightmare sequence (???), then the Mary Poppinses, and then the teen sequence came on, and we turned it off.

I was disappointed because we'd watched the Beijing opening ceremonies earlier in the day, which were entirely child friendly and impressive, and then we let the kids stay up to watch the London opening ceremonies, and we couldn't even let them watch the whole thing. Oh well.

The grassy hill was neat.; 7/28/12, 11:50 AM
Freeman Hunt said...: I HATED that they upstaged the orchestra with a stupid comedy sideshow.; 7/28/12, 11:51 AM
William said...: I only watched part of it towards the end. It looked very expensive and strange. Massed flights of Mary Poppins. Is that sublime or ridiculous?.....Certain ceremonies--the Rose Bowl Parade, the Olympic opening, Mardi Gras Carnivals--exist in their own dimension. They're not kitsch and they're not camp. They're celebratory of a culture's ability to waste time and money to create a moment that demonstrates that culture's ability to effectively organize activities that waste time and money. So much time and money is wasted in life. It's good to have ceremonies like this so we can see how talented professionals can come together and waste time and money in ways that are beyond our imagning.; 7/28/12, 11:59 AM
Freeman Hunt said...: But it was aesthetically bad.; 7/28/12, 12:02 PM
Lyle said...: Yep, when they spelled out NHS I laughed.

I can't believe they forgot to include the elderly in that part of the program.; 7/28/12, 12:04 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: I think they meant to highlight the children's hospital, but it did come off strangely when they spelled "NHS" and were only treating children.; 7/28/12, 12:07 PM
ndspinelli said...: Titus you're usually pretty good @ identifying gay things. You do realize the Opening Ceremony is as gay as P-Town, don't you?; 7/28/12, 12:07 PM
Ann G said...: The whole point of the children being sick was explained - didn't you see the reference to Great Ormond Street Hospital? That was funded by the profits from Peter Pan. Yes, it did make me proud to be British. We have socialised medicine, so if some nutter goes mad and shoots people in a cinema, I know the injured will be treated and won't be made bankrupt if they aren't insured. We can also be much more sure we won't get shot...; 7/28/12, 12:07 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: Great Britain has such an interesting history, they should have cut the teen part for more of that. And they should have heightened the exhibitions of the arts rather than assuming that the audience would be too mindless and superficial to care.; 7/28/12, 12:10 PM
Anonymous said...: I enjoyed imagining half the stadium looking at each other and wondering what 'SHN' stands for.; 7/28/12, 12:15 PM
William said...: They should have handed out a flier saying that the billions ordinarily spent on opening ceremonies will be donated to children's hospital and sports rehab facilities throughout the UK. Maybe the Rollin Stones could have played a few songs.; 7/28/12, 12:27 PM
William said...: Drudge has a picture of the Queen parachuting into the stadium. It's an upskirt shot. Any ceremony that gives the masses an upskirt view of the Queen is not a complete waste of time.; 7/28/12, 12:33 PM
Christy said...: Watched the whole thing with half an eye. Mostly boring. How can Kenneth Branagh and David Bowie be boring?

Queen was a good sport, but she looked bored too.

It did have the aura of a workers' paradise, didn't it?

So Lauer and Viera's touting it before hand as something we would all be talking about tomorrow was right. Just not in the way they meant. Is that an "even a stopped clock" moment?; 7/28/12, 12:43 PM
rcocean said...: It reminded me of a bad Superbowl half-time show or the SNL satire "Up with People".; 7/28/12, 1:19 PM
rcocean said...: Brazil has nothing to worry about. All they have to do is bring on a man with a bag of kittens and the world would say it was better than London 2012.; 7/28/12, 2:06 PM
Jane the Actuary said...: Painful, absolutely painful. What I found most disturbing was the way they cut to video clips. I couldn't watch any more after the bit with the house. Knowing this is basically a TV show that the audience sees on a jumbotron as opposed to a performance which the TV audience is viewing alongside the live audience creeped me out.

In my dream "budget" Olympics (in which the host city uses existing stadia rather than building $400 million "temporary" venues), the opening ceremony will be a well-produced concert of the host country's traditional music and dance (for the U.S., that would mean everything from early American folk songs to square dancing, bluegrass, some Elvis, techno, etc.); 7/28/12, 2:56 PM
Joe Schmoe said...: I didn't see it last night, but saw clips on TV today. The hospital kids for some reason made me think of the kids in Triumph of the Will by Leni Reifenstahl. What you're seeing is harmless enough, but there are enough nefarious overtones to make the whole thing very creepy. Obviously the kids are unaware of the part they are playing in the larger political game.; 7/28/12, 3:01 PM
Joe Schmoe said...: The flag bearer for Turkey, a woman, had an absolutely beautiful face. I don't know who she was, but she was gorgeous.; 7/28/12, 3:04 PM
Mary Beth said...: I was hoping for a colonial occupation themed opening ceremony. In the true spirit of the Olympics, it would have let so many other nations participate too.; 7/28/12, 3:05 PM
Deb said...: So it was pretty bad? I didn't watch because I don't have TV and haven't for about 10 years. So, they couldn't spare one minute for a tribute to the eleven Israeli athletes who were murdered 40 years ago? But then, they never did and never have, to my knowledge so what is significant about the 40th anniversary.; 7/28/12, 3:18 PM
Joe Schmoe said...: Gawd, if they spelled out 'NHS' in London, I can only imagine what would've been spelled out if Chicago had been chosen to host the 2016 games. 'ACLU'? 'SEIU'? 'ACORN'?; 7/28/12, 3:26 PM
Joe Schmoe said...: Deb said So, they couldn't spare one minute for a tribute to the eleven Israeli athletes who were murdered 40 years ago?

I wondered about that too. Here's a bit in NRO about it. Apparently the Muslim countries threatened to boycott the games if they did it. Of course, the IOC being the Euroweenie/poor-man's-version-of-the-UN, they capitulated completely and quickly.; 7/28/12, 3:40 PM
Paddy O said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 7/28/12, 4:08 PM
Paddy O said...: Tearing fields to build towers belching smoke, then forging the one ring that brings other rings onto the field?

All followed by a parade of men and women from all sorts of nations parading through the gates.

Which means that the theme, as far as I can tell, was Britain=Mordor.; 7/28/12, 4:08 PM
fivewheels said...: The Turkish flag-bearer was Neslihan Demir Darnel, volleyball.; 7/28/12, 4:33 PM
furious_a said...: I was confused by the Abraham Lincoln impersonators doing the hand-jive in the Shire, and the Sherry Bobbins parachute regiment vanquishing Voldemort while a bunch of doctors and nurses did the Lindy just gave me a headache.

Given all the former adversaries present, and the soccer-hooligan penchant for rubbing it in, I was hoping for a re-enactment of either Agincourt, Sink the Bismark! or the liberation of the Falklands.; 7/28/12, 4:57 PM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: Bagoh said..
"Socialism is your 26 year old unemployed son lying on the couch watching daytime TV while you are at work."

I am so stealing that.; 7/28/12, 6:41 PM