Saturday, August 14, 2004

Republican in Name Only Included in CNBC's Olympic coverage this morning was brief footage of Bush the Elder ceremonially tossing the first pitch to inaugurate the softball competition. It turns out he's a lefty -- confirming what die-hard conservatives always suspected about him.  Read his lips. 10:09:31 AM

Zorba The Geek American have enough trouble with history.  NBC didn't have to add to the confusion by opening its coverage of the Olympics last night with John Williams' theme from "Jurassic Park".  So which came first, viewers must be wondering, the velociraptors or the ancient Greeks? The featured performer in the opening ceremony's pageantry of Greek Gods and Goddesses was Eros, flying around in midair like Peter Pan.  His name means physical love, as distinguished from spiritual love, signified by the Greek word Agape.  Thus, the Greeks avoid the ambiguity of the single English verb Love,  responsible for so many misunderstandings: "I love you" -- "I love my dog" -- "I love Chinese food." All this erotic choreography in Athens was accompanied by the haunting, elegaic final movement of Gustav Mahler's third symphony.  Not a word about the music from Greek-American host Bob Costas and his sidekick Katie Couric.  They probably thought it was composed by Mikis Theodorakis.  Predictably, Costas and Couric made the Parade of Nations sound like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. At midnight, I switched over to CNBC, which was covering the women's air rifle competition.  One of the shooters was Sonja Pfeilschifter from Germany.  File Shifter -- sounds like some new utility software from Microsoft. It remains to be seen whether women's air hockey and air guitar will be featured sports in future Olympics. 9:57:46 AM