News & Current Events08 Aug 2008 @ 5:08
Another Four Years Pass
By the time you read this the Beijing Olympics’ Opening Ceremony will have already started, and depending on when you read this they may already be over, but here in the U.S. we will not see the Opening Ceremony, scheduled for 8:08 PM local time in Beijing (GMT +8), for another 12-15 hours.
None the less, I wait with anticipation for 7:30 PM Eastern/Pacific when NBC will (re)broadcast the Olympic Opening Ceremony here in the States. Now, most of you who know me well know that I do not particularly care for sporting events, but something about the Olympics is different - I think that it is the spectacle of it all. NBC’s “Nightly News with Brian Williams” began broadcasting live from Beijing yesterday evening and will be there for the duration; of course, the network has the U.S. broadcast rights for the Olympics through 2012 so sending the flagship news team is really a no-brainer. But, something about these Olympic games are especially important, I believe, because of their location: inside the world’s next great superpower. We have already seen a multitude of stories coming out of China about the government’s determination at any cost to get this right, tearing down entire complexes of homes, mandatory factory closures and taking cars off of the road to ease pollution. So, with every news outlet in the world focusing on Beijing, I heard that NBC alone has some 4,000 staffers there, it will be interesting to see how it all plays out. Oh, and I guess to see all those amazing atheletes compete too.
on 08 Aug 2008 at 11:34 # blair farley
feels like such a dog and pony show to me… everyone knows that the chinese are violating human rights and trading arms with our enemies… yet we all put on a smile and pretend like they are not simply because they provide the us with lots and lots of cheap goods which helps our economy.
i think the parallels to the 1936 games in berlin are an apt comparison. hitler was trying to show the world how civilized his regime was… and we all know how that turned out.
i will watch the games, and I will enjoy the sporting action (sort of), but I will never really understand why it is that we try to defend a country that is not indefensible in its policies.
oh and one more thing. gwb standing at the embassy and giving a pathetic speech about how it would be really great if they could do a little better on human rights is an insult to the real people that are suffering. he should just say… i don’t really care about the things china is doing wrong because it is good business to be friends with them.