Bush, basketball, and Bombast in Beijing

August 12, 2008
By: Dave Zirin

Here are the last three entries of the Nation Olympics blog.

Beijing Basketball Watched By Billions

The most laudable part of the Summer Olympics is that it is one of the few times when the stifling sporting atmosphere in the United States actually opens up its window and lets in some air. For several glorious weeks, we turn down the volume on baseball, basketball and football--with a dash of NASCAR--and get to glory in other athletic pursuits. We can consider that swimmer  Michael Phelps might be a better athlete than anyone in the NFL. We can debate whether Dara Torres, the 41-year-old swimmer whose first Olympics was in 1984, is perhaps every bit the physical marvel that Brett Favre is. We can see Jamaica's Usain Bolt and the US's Tyson Gay race in the 100 meters and reimagine speed. We can watch the Chinese women divers and wonder how it's possible for such tightly wound momentum to produce such a small splash.

And with all this athletic and gender diversity on display, I am going to write about men's basketball. Yes, flagellate me with my own hypocrisy as I retreat into the humid air of the mainstream, but Sunday's game between the US and China was historic and deserves its own mention. It has been called the most watched basketball game in history, as more than a billion people tuned in to see the US defeat China 101-70. But the blowout score doesn't begin to tell the story of the Chinese team, led by NBA All-Star Yao Ming, who kept the game close for about fifteen minutes. That is a remarkable accomplishment. Keep in mind, China practically didn't have a team twenty years ago. They traveled to the states in 1986 and in an exhibition game against Division III Queens College, won by a whisker. Now they can compete with the greatest players in the world. The game also showed that the US still hasn't learned to hit three point shots in international play, which may damage them terribly against Spain, Argentina, or my darkhorse pick, Greece, which doesn't have a single NBA player but knows how to work the international game.

I wanted this to be the first post where I didn't mention the ubiquitous jock-sniffing former cheerleader, George W. Bush, but alas he was at the game as well. Bush even entered the team's huddle and put in his hand for a "1-2-3, USA!" cheer. No word on whether ace point guard Chris Paul of the New Orleans Hornets, who has invested time and money in rebuilding the Big Easy, was able to keep down his lunch.

But while Bush taketh, he also giveth. In what can only be described as the most apt photo possible, one that sums up his whole sorry administration, Bush held up a flag where the stars and stripes were reversed. It's been eight years of doing everything precisely wrong, a King Midas in reverse, where all he touches turns to dung. If I were on the US men's hoops team, I'd be washing my hands with turpentine right about now.

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Bush & Kissinger Invade Beijing

Remember Nero fiddling while the world burns? Nero's got nothing on George W Bush. Hell, at least Nero was displaying a demonstrative skill. No, while Russia shells the Georgia capital, while the US is engaged in two military occupations, while unemployment numbers spike at home, Bush has remained in Beijing past the opening ceremonies to flirt with beach volleyball players, stare longingly at US softball star Jennie Finch and give pep talks to the US teams so they "go for the gold". (He was greeted by US athletes with applause described to me as "tepid.")

Bush then delivered a ham handed Sunday sermon where he said, "No state, man, or woman should fear the influence of a loving religion." (Do loving religions call for crusades? Just checking.)

Almost everywhere Bush has gone during the Olympics he's been shadowed by that paragon of love Henry Kissinger. These have been in so many ways, the Kissinger Games--a demonstration of how brutally efficient a market dictatorship can be. It's Pinochet's Chile with red flags and Kissinger has entered his personal paradise. NBC has done all it could to spread this gospel of the Kissinger games. As Ken Silverstein has reported, NBC's China expert, Joshua Cooper-Ramos, heads Kissinger's Beijing office (not that NBC has alerted us to this fact.) But NBC did take the time to pan the cameras to George and Laura when the Iraqi Olympic Team showed up. "You can feel the energy in this stadium, said the banally ubiquitous Matt Lauer. That's journalism for you under market Stalinism. IOC president Jacques Rogge called the Beijing games, "The gateway to the future." Yikes. I could use some of that loving religion right about now. Tomorrow maybe. I'll actually talk about some of the sports!

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Beijing Opening: Show Goes On Without Spielberg

On this morning, the day after the spectacular, pyrotechnic launch of the Olympic games, lets take a second to recall who was excluded from the party. No not George W. Bush or Vladamir Putin. Both men took time away from bombing other countries to attend the dazzling opening ceremonies in Beijing. Not Henry Kissinger, who probably attended because China is one of the few places he can fly without risking arrest. As the jaw dropping exhibition displayed, what Tom Shales of the Washington Post called, "enough fireworks for 100 fourth of Julys", it was Steven Spielberg who was left at home, crying with his Oscars. Spielberg had agreed to direct these opening ceremonies, which may turn out to have been the most watched television event in the history of the world. And it was Spielberg who was shamed into breaking his contract when Mia Farrow called him "the Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Games" this past March.

Riefenstahl was of course the visionary Nazi filmmaker who on the behest of Joseph Geobbels directed Olympia the documentary of the 1936 games. It was a rather unfair charge. Riefenstahl, who lived until 2003, was despised for her role as a Nazi propagandist. But Olympia was visionary, changing the way sports would forever be filmed. Every opening ceremony since has owed something to the 1936 games. All their wildly praised grandeur owes a great deal to Nazi Germany. Before those 1936 games, there were no grand opening ceremonies and no running of the torch. As Jeremy Schaap wrote in his book Triumph, "The Nazis had taken what had always been a rather clubbish, overgrown track-and-field meet and turned it into the spectacle that even now we recognized as the modern Olympics."

Last night's opening ceremonies were a continuance of what Schaap calls "the pagan pomp" which have been the hallmark of these opening ceremonies since those Berlin games of yesteryear. This has been true of all the opening ceremonies--taking the bombastic nationalism of 1936 and leaving the straight-armed salutes at the doors. What made China's different though was the extraordinary money and space technology they devoted to making sure the spectacle could be all it was supposed to be.

As Zhou Fengguang, head of the Engineering Design and Research Institute of the People's Liberation Army General Armament Department said to the newspaper Xinhua, "The engineering design at the opening ceremony borrowed many of the latest space technologies. They ensured the stable operation of thousands of devices." Yes, just as these Olympic games are ushering in unprecedented surveillance technology to the world, they are also allowing us to witness the latest in military hardware while the war mongers of the moment Bush and Putin, watch in awe, and maybe sign some military contracts on the side. No wonder Kissinger wanted a front row seat.