Quote Originally Posted by Yaridovich View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Flying Mullet View Post
I really despised NBC's commentary on the opening ceremony. I don't know if they had Chinese military behind them with M-16's but they sounded very canned like they were reading from a script and they certainly painted a revisionist view of Chinese history to put China in a good light.
That is actually not too far off. China is censoring the games heavily and many foreigners can't even access various sites on the Internet because of its censorship.
In a sense, they *are* reading from scripts - no-one gets to see the entire opening ceremony in advance, so shortly before the broadcast they're given transcripts that say what's happening, and what it means. Since so much of the ceremony consisted of interpretive, symbolic stuff, that kind of assistance is necessary.

Also, the view of Chinese history that they provided wasn't exactly "revisionist". The opening ceremony basically covered China from ancient times through to the late middle ages, and they didn't exactly have communism back then. It's not evil outrageous censorship, it's just that their performance focussed on the high points of their civilisation. Do you think the London Games opening ceremony is going to include Bloody Sunday, Churchill's ADD, and Tony Blair?