NBC’s Chris Collinsworth prods Basketball player Kobe Bryant (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) with an audible sneer to remember that public expressions of patriotism are no longer appropriate.

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Collinsworth: Is that a ‘cool’ thing to say, in this day and age? That you love your country, and that you’re fighting for the red, white and blue? It seems sort of like a day gone by(?)

Bryant: No, it’s a cool thing for me to say. I feel great about it, and I’m not ashamed to say it. I mean, this is a tremendous honor.

Barbarian participation in competition is a firmly established part of the modern day Olympics. But the contemporary Olympic committee ought to make a policy of refusing to allow the Olympic Games ever to be hosted by totalitarian or non-European countries, period.

The 1936 Nuremburg Olympics, long ago, demonstrated the unseemly manner in which the spectacle of Olympic competition could be appropriated to glorify a criminal regime and to legitimize in the eyes of the world its despicable ideology.

The 1988 Seoul Olympics featured flagrant cheating by host country judges on behalf of native athletes, and ought to have made clear the undesirable problems associated with trying to conduct fair competitions under the authority of representatives of non-European cultures where the rule of objective law is unknown and in which “face” is valued far above integrity.

Predictably enough, the Red Chinese Olympics are proving to be another carefully orchestrated pageant of deceptive spectacle glorifying the Chinese State and its authoritarian regime, and cheating in competition and judging is well underway.

Phony fireworks in opening ceremony broadcast.

The actual 7-year-old singer replaced with a more attractive lip-syncher mouthing to a recording.

56 Chinese minority ethnic groups falsely represented by 56 ordinary Chinese (Han) children.

China cheats, winning Olympic gold medals with underage gymnasts.

Jonathan Kay rants indignantly, too.

To view them, you will first have to allow Microsoft to install its Silverlight plugin, then restart the browser.

Here is the Equestrian events video page.

Now that is convenient.

Yahoo Sports explains that, though fireworks were actually used at the Beijing Olympic Games opening ceremonies, the astonishing display broadcast around the world on television was faked, combining computer generated images with prerecorded shots of fireworks.

News-agency-not-to-be-named photo

Same news agency complete story, with even more cute photos (whose reproduction is streng verboten).

Hat tip to the News Junkie.

The LA Times reported:

Defending gold medalists Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh gave the chief executive some pointers. Then after a good play, in the tradition of female volleyballers, May-Treanor turned, bent over slightly and offered her bikinied rear-end for the 43rd president to slap.

“Mr. President,” she said, “want to?”

Want to has nothing to do with it in public life.

As the son of a president, a husband of nearly 37 years, the father of two daughters, the subject of some attempted tabloid exposes and a seasoned political veteran, who is not a female athlete but knows that every camera for a half-mile is trained on him, Bush wisely chose instead to brush his hand across the small of May-Treanor’s back.

Darn it!

Date: Program–Time (EST) on Channel

Aug. 9: 3-Day: Dressage–2:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. on USA
Aug. 11: 3-Day: Cross- Country–6:00pm-8:00pm OXYGEN
Aug. 12: 3-Day: Stadium Team Gold Medal Final–6:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m. on OXYGEN
Aug. 13: Dressage–6:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m. on OXYGEN
Aug. 14: Dressage Team Gold Medal Final–6:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m. on OXYGEN
Aug. 15: Show Jumping–6:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m. on OXYGEN
Aug. 16: Dressage Individual–5:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. MSNBC
Aug. 17: Show Jumping Team Gold Medal Final 1st Round–10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m on NBC
Aug. 18: Show Jumping Team Gold Medal Final Round–6:00pm-8:00 p.m. OXYGEN
Aug. 19: Dressage Individual Gold Medal Final–6:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m. on OXYGEN
Aug. 21: Show Jumping Individual Gold Medal Final–10:00am-1:00 pm on NBC

Apparently, China’s promise that the 20,000 foreign journalists covering the Olympic Games would have unfettered Internet access is going the same way as its pledge to provide breathable air — up in smoke. ...

Early arrivals at the main press center found themselves unable to access scores of sites on the usual topics the Chinese government prefers to keep quiet — among them Tibet, Taiwan, Tiananmen Square and the sites of Amnesty International, Radio Free Asia and several Hong Kong newspapers. “It has been our policy to provide the media with convenient and sufficient access to the Internet,” said Sun Weide, the chief spokesman for the Beijing organizing committee. “I believe our policy will not affect reporters’ coverage of the Olympic Games.” ...

Meanwhile, Sen. Sam Brownback, R.-Kan., says he has documents indicating that China has forced all the major foreign-owned hotels to install spying equipment that will monitor the Net activities of journalists, athletes’ families and guests during the Games and beyond. The Public Security Bureau’s order says failure to comply could bring financial penalties, suspension of Net access, or the loss of a license to operate a hotel in China. “These hotels are justifiably outraged by this order, which puts them in the awkward position of having to craft pop-up messages explaining to their customers that their Web history, communications, searches and key strokes are being spied on by the Chinese government,” Brownback said.

I’m sure the host country will put on a lovely tribute to the Olympic ideals during the opening ceremonies, but it’s going to be awfully hard not to gag a little while watching.