Olympic Rant #5 Barkingly mad start to the games
IT was
a weird start to Games e competition with American super-swimmer Michael Phelps
missing a medal in the 400m men’s individual medley won by teammate Ryan
Lochte.
Lochte one, Phelps nil
Phelps
described it as a “crappy race’’, presumably reflecting on his own performance
rather than the collective effort of the finalists. Still, Phelps missed a
medal in eloquence as well as in the pool.
It was hard
to know what to make of the performance of senior sports scribe Barney Ronay
after the first gold medal of the Games went to China’s Siling Yi in the sport of shooting-at-things. The sub-category was the 10m air rifle. Thank
Mao; the 10m was not the calibre of the rifle but the distance from which you
shoot at things.
On behalf of the guardian .co.uk,
journo Ronay wrote, ‘China’s parpingly jaunty anthem
was the first to be heard in triumph at London 2012.’ Parpingly? Really,
Barney.
The obscure word “parping” seems to
mean the sound made by a car horn.
Whether parpingly can be used
successfully to modify “jaunty”, I just do not know. What I do know is the word
appeared in the online guardian in Andrew Sparrow’s blog on June 16, 2012.
‘
Boris Johnson has arrived in Cape Town to fly the flag for
England's 2018 World Cup bid (and) did give his views on the controversial
vuvuzela, the horn blasted deafeningly by fans during every game of the South
African World Cup.
Johnson said: ’Certainly the vuvuzela is a very very
interesting device…..It's a great way of expressing yourself in a loud,
vehement, parping kind of way. … I think maybe that's not the effect we're
going to want to see in 2012 [at the London Olympics].’
’
Was it coincidence that Barney Ronay revived the word parping(ly) or
was it some sort of tribute to the barkingly mad Boris Johnson? BTW, Johnson brought little to the lingual
table in stating a horn had the sound of a horn and that sound is rarely
jaunty.
Enough of this nonsense bring on that jaunty sound.
That
anthem could have been written for a Chinese victory in the international sport
of shooting at things. The lyric about China facing its greatest danger is a
bit dodgy though. This anthem is likely
to be around for centuries so the message for the generations is be on a
constant war footing. Grab your air rifle and be prepared.
I am not sure tourists will flock to that new
Great Wall if it is made of flesh and blood; could be a bit slippery. Perhaps I
am being too literal.
It
is heartening to see the Chinese lyrics pay homage to the French anthem La Marseillaise. The
Chinese version has the good taste to ditch that French stuff about fearsome soldiers coming into our midst to cut the throats of your sons and consorts. It is
something of a surprise France does not do better in shooting-at-things. I
believe the reason is the French athletes try to sell their arms during the
competition, leaving them at a distinct disadvantage during the shoot-offs for
medals.
During
shooting-at-things, athletes are encouraged to only fire at inert objects. Live
pigeon shooting had its only appearance at the 1900 Paris Games. It did not
take off.
Neither
did the 21 pigeons Belgian Leon de Linden shot to win the gold. They do not
call them pigeons for nothing, but even the IOC could see the ineffable killing
the unflappable was a trifle off.
Crap is the word
CRAP is quick off the blocks in the competition for
the golden word of the 2012 London Olympics.
Swim champ Michael Phelps missed a medal in the
400m men’s individual medley and described his performance as a crappy race.
Tory MP Aidan Burley took to Twitter to describe the Opening ceremony as
“leftie multicultural crap”.
You would have thought that phrase has few shades of meaning,
far fewer than 50, but Burley said he was misunderstood. Unfortunately for
public figures, the nature of Twitter makes it difficult to bleat the old
stand-by of being taken out of context.
The MP then went on to make the bizarre claim the rappers did his head
in.
‘We had all these rappers – that is what got me to the point
about multiculturalism.’
Burley received little support from his Conservative colleagues.
The Mad Mayor of London said it was nonsense, a subject on which Boris Johnson
is an authority.
‘People say it was all leftie stuff. That is nonsense. I'm a
Conservative and I had hot tears of patriotic pride from the beginning. I was
blubbing like Andy Murray,’ Johnson said. Why he had to tie-in Murray’s tears
after losing the Wimbledon tennis final was anybody’s guess, if anybody wants
to bother interpreting thoughts from the addled Mayoral mind.
Seems my tweet has been
misunderstood. I was talking about the way it was handled in the show, not
multiculturalism itself
Thank God the athletes have
arrived! Now we can move on from leftie multi-cultural crap. Bring back red
arrows, Shakespeare and the Stones!
The most leftie opening
ceremony I have ever seen - more than Beijing, the capital of a communist
state! Welfare tribute next?
It was left up to online readers to stick up for Burley.
This is from a reader of the Independent
Burley was right.
This was not an opening ceremony but an excuse by the liberal elite to pour more of their absurd and defeatist multi-cultural propaganda into the Olympics. Why Danny Boyle, for crying out loud.
This was not an opening ceremony but an excuse by the liberal elite to pour more of their absurd and defeatist multi-cultural propaganda into the Olympics. Why Danny Boyle, for crying out loud.
Look, next time, why not just have an opening ceremony
full of addicts and ravers at a disco and cut the attempts to present the
distorted history lessons. Why bother with the athletes at all? This country
has lost it.
Most Independent readers took the opposite view:
Hilarious! An opening ceremony for an event featuring
athletes from more than 200 nations, hosted by one of the most culturally and
ethnically diverse cities on the planet branded “leftie multicultural crap”!
Where does the Tory party get such prize turnips from? I know they don't like
their MPs to be too clever, but he really takes the gold for ignorance and
boorish stupidity. Cameron should promote him to the Cabinet immediately- at
least he's honest about his racism, xenophobia and fascistic tendencies!
Bernie Dowling July 29, 2912
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