Rant: So angry that Liverpool Football Club's playing a "home game" in my city tonight. Boo. BOOOOOOO. I want to protest. I want to occupy something, damn it. I have to watch a struggling Red Sox team night in and night out so these jerks can have an EPL squad to violently fight over? I'll tolerate Liverpudlians swarming upon Fenway Park when they've written "Penny Lane" and "Hello Goodbye." Oh, these aren't those guys? Screw them then.

LOL: London 2012 opening ceremonies were hilariously forced and mostly awful. Somehow it always takes me by surprise when I see the lengths England will go to in order to represent themselves as not mostly Caucasian. As though they're fooling anyone. And I thought white guilt was bad on THIS side of the pond. And that's without even touching on the highly questionable relevance of the "celebration" of British writers.

Aren't the opening ceremonies to the Olympic Games usually a display of how corny a culture can be, anyway?

My favorite part was how, during the bulk of the ceremony that wasn't the parade of nations, everybody on the field had to do awkward dances right where they stood. Every camera cutaway looked like a middle school kid at their first dance, bobbing up and down a little bit in a hopeless attempt to show that there's some rhythm there. The whole shift from "vaguely Dickensian portrait of the industrial revolution" to "something about texting and the tube and...I'm pretty sure I lost the plot about two minutes after Bob Costas introduced characters" was pretty funny as well. Also: that little hill that everything was centered on looked like something out of Hobbiton.

Rave: Let's give Danny Boyle a little bit of credit: when it came time to incorporate The Rolling Stones and The Who into the ceremony, he resisted the temptation to wheel out ancient Mick, ancient Keith, ancient Pete, and ancient Roger to perform those songs. I don't think we needed a grey and aging Roger Daltry to tell us about his generation. The old recording is a big improvement.

Rave: HA! It looks like I wasn't the only one who noticed the forced nature of ethnic minorities being prominently represented as though England were mostly black. And anyone in England who noticed is apparently guilty of "jaw dropping racism" as evident by BtEO's re-tweet of someone referencing this article: http://t.co/fzU1zAY6

Just for reference England is predominately black and should go to great pains to represent itself as such and to declare to the world its intense pride in that fact.

That was an interesting article to read. I didn't actually watch the opening ceremony myself, so I have not comment on whether it "seemed forcefully racially integrated" or not. I was struck in reading the comments though by how much the apparent national dialogue on race and racism so CLOSELY matches ours. How disappointing. I had really hoped that some of the worst of our cultural racism was a result of our civil war and the bitterness it left behind. Turns out bigotry is everywhere and sounds pretty much the same.... :*(

A commenter wrote:2. Race is meaningless.

On no it isn’t. Certain racial groups are statistically proven to commit more violent crime, and to be similarly over-represented in welfare dependency. Certain racial groups have also been unable to create anything like a functioning Western-style civilisation in their homelands, meaning they cannot help sustain Britain as a First World country once here. Race matters. Basically, if you import enough Pakistanis or Africans into your country, your country becomes like Africa and Pakistan.

Holy crap.

Deacon wrote:Rave: HA! It looks like I wasn't the only one who noticed the forced nature of ethnic minorities being prominently represented as though England were mostly black. And anyone in England who noticed is apparently guilty of "jaw dropping racism" as evident by BtEO's re-tweet of someone referencing this article: http://t.co/fzU1zAY6

Just for reference England is predominately black and should go to great pains to represent itself as such and to declare to the world its intense pride in that fact.

That post was actually more about the Daily Mail's naked racism (claiming it impossible to find a happy mixed-race family, disparaging the inclusion of grime music — in a section that had included a wide range of mostly white bands — because it's black culture) in an article that was ostensibly about not glorifying the NHS^[1] than about whether the cultural mix of country was correctly represented.

The great majority of the performers in the ceremony were volunteers^[2], whoever turned up and was capable, would it have been better if they'd turned away black, asian, mixed-race, etc… folk because they felt it would upset the balance vs. whites. I certainly didn't watch it (after having seen your comment and the widely pilloried tweet by MP Aiden Burley) and think there weren't enough white people there, aside from possibly right at the start when a choir of roughly 50/50 white/non-white children opened with Jerusalem; this was swiftly balanced by the Northern Irish, Scottish, and Welsh choirs being near totally white.

The ceremony was about our history, our national character, our cultural and technological contributions to the world; it was not about black pride, asian pride, mixed-race pride, or even pure-bred-white-Anglo-Saxon pride — the fact that this was the message you took from it says far more about you than it does about anyone responsible for organising the ceremony.

Arres, apparently we gifted our cultural racism to you back in the day, and are perhaps only marginally better at hiding the fact it's still there in greater degrees than we should like after hundreds of years of apparent social progress.

Edit: Why is it no matter how many times I preview a post, I still find a few more errors once I've hit submit? Feel free to ignore any more I've missed.

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[1] Which drew upon a single (albeit tragic and disturbing) data-point as proof that the entire concept of socialised healthcare is fatally flawed (you may well wish to argue it is, but not for the reason the Daily Mail used)

[2] And for reference, London — where one would expect the bulk of volunteers (especially children) to come from — is more culturally diverse (only 71% white vs. 92% white according to the 2001 census, ethnicity data from the 2011 census hasn't been released yet, but signs are that it's unlikely the country has become more white) than the country as a whole, East London especially so.

BtEO wrote:The great majority of the performers in the ceremony were volunteers^[2], who ever turned up and was capable, would it have been better if they'd turned away black, asian, mixed-race, etc… folk because they felt it would upset the balance vs. whites.

What? Do you really believe that? At least over here they were gushing about how long it took to cast the various roles such as the stylin' black youth and his mostly black love interest, finding just the right people to portray the vision, blah blah blah. These weren't volunteers handing out wrist bands or picking up trash or something, but people cast to play a particular part, including many children. My comment was how noticeable it is, as a long running trend, that British media--at least the state run part of it--seems to try to quench its embarrassment of being white by jamming in minorities (primarily blacks but also Indian/Pakistani) to an unrepresentative degree. It makes the desperate white guilt and resulting political correctness in our country look nearly dismissive. Hell, I just recently watched the episode of Doctor Who where they go back to Shakespeare times, and it's fantastic to see how happy and integrated black people were in London in the late 1500's, apparently.

The ceremony was about our history, our national character, our cultural and technological contributions to the world; it was not about black pride, asian pride, mixed-race pride, or even pure-bred-white-Anglo-Saxon pride — the fact that this was the message you took from it says far more about you than it does about anyone responsible for organising the ceremony.

Heh, you're free to believe that if it makes you feel better, but nobody ever said (or at least I never said) that it was an exercise in any particular racial pride, only an overreaching and fully aware attempt to portray the UK as something other than predominately white, to the point where I believe they felt they would offend people if they didn't make the specific choices they did, or at least that they'd feel ashamed in their hearts if they didn't take the opportunity to promote minorities as the new norm, as the way they want the rest of the world to view the UK. It falls in line with "your national character," at least.

If even 30% of London were visibly not white, in contrast to less than 10% everywhere else, but more than 30% of the featured performers were not white--of those nearly all black, is that because not enough white people volunteered, so their hand was forced in showing a rather extremely unrepresentative racial mix? Is that why they designed the part of the show intended to illustrate how hip and progressive the UK is around black people? Is that why every state funded promotional poster or billboard you see around London and most of the rest of the UK seems to feature minorities? Why every university seems to by chance have an incredibly even mix of males and females of all major races displayed on their brochure, with the women as the engineers and the men as health care workers?

It's just a minor thing, noting how silly it felt, like, "Hey, look, we're cool, right?" I don't know about the Daily Mail, but I know in general race and immigration are frowned upon to discuss openly in the US, and it appears either that level of self-loathing and shame is much deeper in the UK or the UK is far more concerned with appearances and thus is much more eager to burn a lot of energy trying convince the rest of the world that they take every pain to artificially increase ethnic diversity among their citizens. Maybe it's just a response to overt racism in the UK, their Will & Grace response to the homophobes, metaphorically speaking, but I doubt it. Other than stories told by one Pakistani gentleman in Liverpool, I've heard very little in the way of actual racism.

Deacon wrote:Hell, I just recently watched the episode of Doctor Who where they go back to Shakespeare times, and it's fantastic to see how happy and integrated black people were in London in the late 1500's, apparently.

And yet, the best a black girl could do in the early 1900s, according to the same show, was work as a servant girl. It flipped between quasi-realism and fantasy in a very disconcerting manner.

Rave: I'm glad Boston is not the kind of city that will ever end up hosting an Olympiad. (In fact, it's really not. I'm sitting here imagining what that would be like. If I didn't live here, those thoughts would be pretty funny.) Looks like the kind of thing that you want to happen in somebody else's city, though it also looks like it would probably be fun to attend. The logistics of the whole thing are baffling to me.

Rave: I have an idea. An idea for Olympic Calvinball. There. I fixed your quasi-ancient sporting celebration for the rest of time, IOC. I expect my giant novelty check will be overnighted.

Would it have judges?

Maybe in a couple of games, but if every game had the same number of judges (or the same judging criteria) it wouldn't quite be Calvinball.

Well, I remain convinced that it's actually impossible to win a game of Calvinball, so it doesn't really matter how many judges you have or whether you have judges at all. And a referee is right out.

Ah! But that's just it! Since the rules are made up on the fly, every team would just need one sharp-tongued player who could make a convincing argument that the game is over and they've won.

So you're bringing in debate as an event in the summer olympics?

Deacon wrote:

BtEO wrote:The great majority of the performers in the ceremony were volunteers^[2], who ever turned up and was capable, would it have been better if they'd turned away black, asian, mixed-race, etc… folk because they felt it would upset the balance vs. whites.

What? Do you really believe that? At least over here they were gushing about how long it took to cast the various roles such as the stylin' black youth and his mostly black love interest, finding just the right people to portray the vision, blah blah blah.

The NBC commentary widely criticised for its general shitness? Adding such useful commentary as Madagascar being a country primarily famous for an animated movie series of the same name, bringing up Idi Amin as Uganda came out (did they mention Hitler and Mussolini with their respective countries too?)^[1]

Joking about not knowing who Sir Tim Berners-Lee was

"If you haven't heard of him, we haven't either."
"Google him"

before a producer obviously spoke in their ears and they add "we of course know what he's credited with creating" — if they'd actually known that why did they say they hadn't heard of him.

Oh, and they cut out a tribute to the victims of 7/7 underground bombings (which happened the day after the announcement that London had won the right to host the 2012 Olympics) and other lost loved ones; so they could show an interview with Michael Phelps. Described in the media guide^[2] as follows:

Memorial Wall
Spectators have been invited to present
images of loved ones who couldn’t
be with us tonight. In a moving
moment, those who are absent from us
are digitally present.

This memorial wall also included two dead US servicemen.

Presumably they had the media guide for the ceremony and so should have been able to do some research beforehand. Not to mention they were showing the thing on a three hour delay on the east coast.

So yes, I'll trust our commentary that said the majority of performers were volunteers, over anything that exited the mouths of NBC's commentators.

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The ceremony was about our history, our national character, our cultural and technological contributions to the world; it was not about black pride, asian pride, mixed-race pride, or even pure-bred-white-Anglo-Saxon pride — the fact that this was the message you took from it says far more about you than it does about anyone responsible for organising the ceremony.

Heh, you're free to believe that if it makes you feel better, but nobody ever said (or at least I never said) that it was an exercise in any particular racial pride

Deacon wrote:Just for reference England is predominately black and should go to great pains to represent itself as such and to declare to the world its intense pride in that fact.

You just fucking said EXACTLY that. You shoved a couple of extra words inbetween "black" and "pride" but otherwise it was exactly what you claimed no one, including yourself, had said.

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Deacon wrote:or the UK is far more concerned with appearances and thus is much more eager to burn a lot of energy trying convince the rest of the world that they take every pain to artificially increase ethnic diversity among their citizens.

I'd say it's the opposite. Those concerned with organising the show used whoever volunteered regardless of race. You sound like to kind of person who'd have gotten angry when Idris Elba was cast as Heimdall. The Norse gods were only white in the same way Jesus is white — people depict their gods in familiar terms. Casting Idris Elba was simply because he fit the role, and skin colour didn't matter to fictional deities (and even for someone who would consider the Norse gods real, the Marvel versions are fictional.) The assignment of roles for the ceremony called for people to represent grand themes — not specific races to represent period-accurate ethnic distributions.

'This is Britain, it has people in it, this is a summary in music and dance and theatre of their history and achievements.' Not: 'This is Britain, in the days before the industrial revolution it had a population of nearly 100% white people, etc…'

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[1] To contrast, the BBC's commentary mentioned Madagascar being the world's fourth largest island, well known for its diverse and unique wildlife, for Uganda they knew both the names of the flag bearer (Madagascar was one of the few instances they didn't name the flag bearer) and Uganda's only medal winner, what sport that medal was in, the Englishman (who recently received an OBE) who trained him, who is more recently is a trainer for Dai Greene, who is captain of Team GB; also finding time to mention the population of Uganda for good measure.

[2] You might want to read the media guide for the best idea of what the intentions were for the various segments. It also repeatedly emphasises that the majority of the 7500 cast were volunteers (from all over the world apparently.)