WITH AMERICA IN POLITICAL TATTERS, WE’LL TRY TO TOUCH LIVES … IN PARIS?
As Joe Biden departs, this is no time to expect the River Seine and a city’s charms to overcome massive security — with fewer people watching the Olympics — while NBC begins telecasts with Snoop Dogg
Already, the TV trailers ooze of seduction and abracadabra. With pompous music streaming and screaming — above shots of an Eiffel Tower that will erupt in your two-week dreams — NBC has you drifting along the Seine during a sunset for a water-lyrical Opening Ceremony. There is a shade atop the boats and crowds, prompting hopes for the Summer Games.
Paris wants to be remembered for bringing back the Olympics spectacle. It will try as too-old Joe Biden drops out of America’s presidential race, in shock and awe, and places attention on our political morass. Donald Trump vs. Kamala Harris, in a sudden one-sided fiasco. This is not our usual technique of focusing on the Summer Games.
“Together, we will fight. And together we will win,” Harris said.
The election is more than three months away. The globe is upon it, but until then, an international festival of athletes will meet. And there are those, including International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach, who think the Games should tackle mountains of world hostilities more willingly than ever. The 2024 Olympics will cost more than $8.2 billion, which is $16 billion less than the 2014 Games in Sochi. Still, at this point in our existence on Earth, what exactly is the point of converging as one?
Are the Olympics fading?
As it is, French locals aren’t exuberant about the event. “Enough with this Games-bashing!” Mayor Anne Hidalgo said. “Enough. Enough of all these buzzkills who don’t want us all to celebrate something together. We’re here and we’re doing it.” They are, even as Hidalgo slipped into a wetsuit to take a plunge not allowed in more than a century. She was compelled to prove the Seine can host the ceremony, only days before swim competitions not involving the Katie Ledecky and Michael Phelps crowd. She swam. She survived. She avoided E.coli. And Hidalgo said, “The Seine is exquisite. The water is very, very good. It’s a testimony that we have achieved a lot of work.”
The question is whether enough people in the world will watch from July 26 — 1:30 p.m. in New York, 10:30 a.m. in Los Angeles for the first memories — through Aug. 11. I will attend the Olympics for the 15th time, the first in years, and it will be the only time I’ve asked how many Americans will tune in. They haven’t done so with the traditional Bob Costas/Jim McKay numbers since the Rio de Janeiro Games in 2016, losing 27 percent of the American audience in Tokyo and dropping 42 percent at the Winter Games in Beijing. These days, the sense is concerning that fans don’t follow Olympians for four years between competitions. People know two U.S. teams in basketball, from the NBA and WNBA, and we keep tabs on Simone Biles in her documentary and Ledecky in her dominant trails. Who else?
The Olympics are in peril and need “to get their groove back,” as Costas told the Washington Post. We never hear broadcasters saying that about the NFL or NBA.
Why would we stop watching quarterbacks in camp? Noah Lyles ran a personal best of 9.81 seconds in the 100 meters Saturday, but he’s behind the magnificence of Usain Bolt. Is Sha’Carri Richardson worth our honor in the women’s 100 after bowing out with a positive drug test three years ago? Al Michaels is gone as a host, reduced to A.I. Al duties via daily recaps. Who will welcome the athletes from the river with Mike Tirico? Try those storied Olympians, Peyton Manning and Kelly Clarkson, and once Peyton makes a crack about the Arc de Triomphe and Champs-Elysees — “Hey, I was a Champ twice!” — I will ponder drowning him. If not him, then Snoop Dogg, who is singing about “the LBC to NBC” when few in the various arrondissements connect Long Beach City to the network. If I’m Snoop and the others, I’m studying the much bigger scene.
Never has our world been more troubled, if not endangered, as more than 200 nations participate. America shows up in a political stupefaction, with Trump soon to rebound after an attempted assassination. In France, control of the French government is splattered. Is anyone in gear? “We want to put our best selves out there to try to give people a glimpse of what our country can be about. And then you hear something like this and it’s so demoralizing and obviously so sad,” U.S. basketball coach Steve Kerr said of the shooting.
“You want positivity and hope — it sounds cheesy, but it’s real,” star Stephen Curry said. “(The shooting) just adds another blemish to what’s going on.”
It’s perilous but urgent to use an anti-terrorism perimeter that stretches for miles past offices and residences, including a 124-year-old bridge assembled with bleachers above the Seine. Those with tickets to arenas must have digital QR codes. For security, at least 45,000 police and 10,000 soldiers will be used, knowing the city has a history of radical attacks. Never mind problems with train tickets. How do they keep 350,000 people safe on Friday?
“This mission is complex and unprecedented,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Olivier, chief of operations of a battalion. “It’s complex because we’re in an environment — the Parisian environment, the Seine — which is an urban environment ... with obvious vulnerabilities. The Seine is an area where there are a lot of activities.”
And Trump? “We were already on a very high level of security. So the attack on Donald Trump only reinforces our vigilance,” he said.
The Ukraine invasion means Russia’s flag won’t be flown and its anthem won’t be heard. For the fourth time, Vladimir Putin has been dispatched from the Games. His people are known as Individual Neutral Athletes, yet the president will continue to be targeted by Americans who know Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was convicted of spying Friday. Putin remains the enemy. Said Biden: “He was targeted by the Russian government because he is a journalist and an American. Evan has endured his ordeal with remarkable strength. We will not cease in our efforts to bring him home.” Another prisoner swap? Brittney Griner, on Team USA, will be hounded about it.
Maybe Snoop and Manning will inform us about high heat. The athletes’ village won’t have air conditioning because Paris wants the “greenest” Olympics amid possible 90-degree temperatures. The U.S. has brought portable units, figuring to win the summer medal count for the fourth straight time and seventh out of eight. So we prevail again. Can we avoid the crap? And I mean crap.
Locals have staged “poop” protests to defecate in the river. Peacock won’t show them on streaming casts, but fans keep trying to foil the Seine ventures via stink emojis. They’ll need that QR code, thankfully, so those of us walking past the water don’t have to smell.
The charms of Paris will guarantee a few more viewers. It’s a matter of whether you will watch from 2 to 5 p.m. ET and hours earlier out West. If not, Kevin Hart and Kenan Thompson are doing a highlights package and Colin Jost is covering surfing from Tahiti, which happens to be a French Polynesia island. Evidently, they want us to laugh.
Which is nice. But in a world captured by U.S. rigmarole, is it possible?
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.