Olympic Opening Ceremony

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by JWBear

My only complaint is that the music during the March of Nations was boring and repetitive. I mean... 20 repeats of the same bagpipe number? Come on... why?

Yeah, bagpipes were a severely poor choice. Yikes.

My favorite opening ceremony ever. Beautiful, powerful, meaningful. Absolutely brilliant use of LED technology.

Favorite moments include the footprints (yeah, they'd BETTER have the most awesome fireworks ever), drums, the mountain and water painting, movable type of course, horizontal runners.

I'm still a little perturbed that Bush is there, but I think the ceremony and NBC did a pretty good job of framing the argument in favor of this kind of engagement. There's a lot of fiction, optimism, glossing over, but they presented the idea that the people really do want to be part of the world and that the totalitarian rule that keeps them isolated understands this, wants to foster it, but is just doing so slowly, cautiously and methodically, perhaps with a few stumble along the way. It's what the world better hope really is happening. And seeing that message being presented by them on such an epic scale gives some credence to that hope I suppose.

I still think Bush could have made the point without showing up. He's the first sitting President to do so. He didn't have to be there, he's not expected to be there. It's no disaster that he was, but it would have been a better choice, imo.