The grumpy aftermath to The Olympics (The Naked City)
Image: Source: @PRussiet on Twitter/X
Karl Marx is famous for theorising that “religion is the opiate of the masses – the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of our soulless conditions.” If he were alive today you might wonder whether he would swap sport for religion, especially during the unbridled fervour of the current Olympics.
Then again if he considered that nearly a third of all countries show little interest in the Olympics (according to a 2021 Statista poll), he might have stuck with religion. Likewise he would have learned of the nearly one billion people on this planet who don’t own a TV set.
It’s the world’s wealthiest countries or those with the most patriotic cash at hand that have sent the biggest teams to Paris and plundered most of the medals – the USA, China, Australia, France, Japan etc. India is now the most populous country in the world but they seldom win more than a handful of medals. What does that tell us – are they just no good at sport? Their cricketers aren’t too bad and maybe it’s because they have much more important priorities.
Nine Entertainment have gambled heavily on Australia’s love of sport and the resulting jingoism with a $305 million rights package that includes Paris, LA and Brisbane as well as the Winter Olympics. That’s a helluva lot of advertising to flog in their saturation, brain bashing approach that features non stop 24/7 TV coverage and an army of commentators.
During the first week of Olympic programing nothing it seemed was going to knock off the gold rush as the lead story on Nine’s six o’clock news – with many of the other broadcasters following suit. Even when the political chief of Hamas was killed, with wide ranging repercussions, the story took second place to our glorious Olympic victories. Nine finally succumbed to social responsibility when it chose to lead off its evening bulletin on Monday 5 August with a terror warning update from ASIO boss Mike Burgess and the PM.
They must have sensed some Olympic fatigue amongst their viewers as we hit day eleven and twelve, regularly reminding them that old favourites like ‘A Current Affair’ would be returning to normal programming. The network has pulled out all stops to keep viewers glued to their coverage, with endless back stories and Parisian flavors – their commentators well schooled in the dictionary of outrageous hyperbole.
With the controversy over faecal contamination in the Seine I almost expected to see a GoPro attached to a turd, taking us on a first hand tour just prior to the triathlon. It will be interesting to see just how Nine’s overall ratings fare and hands up if you switched over to another rerun of ‘Storage Wars’ or ‘Border Security’ on Seven midway through a scintillating water polo match?
We’ve all heard the well worn adage, ‘politics and sport don’t mix’ and that’s certainly why Russia and Belarus were not allowed to compete at the Paris Olympics, given the war in Ukraine. It might also be said that the current Olympic celebration of sport totally distances itself from the reality of what is really happening in the world. Fist pumps and ooh la las in Paris but the devastation and suffering in Ukraine is only three hours away by plane. And eight hours away in Gaza it’s unlikely there’s still a TV set amongst the rubble to take in the telecast.
And then of course there’s our own Gina Rinehart whose Hancock Prospecting website boasts “Gina Rinehart is everywhere at the Olympic Games. There’s tens of millions of reasons why”. Rinehart has contributed millions to our Olympic athletes and hosted an exclusive cruise down the ‘merde’ infested Seine for Australian medal winners. At the same time she is running TV commercials in Australia telling us how good mining is for the economy here and without it, how bad it would be. Nothing political to complain about there!
Mercifully it’s another four years until the Los Angeles Olympics when Nine will no doubt embrace all things USA, pushing the hyperbole to an even higher level. In the meantime you won’t hear much about most of the sports played at the Olympics apart from the gold medal winners flogging various products or fronting a number of charities. Yes, you are now safe to turn on your evening news and learn that World War Three has just been declared, rather than yet another gold has been added to our burgeoning medal tally.
