You may be relieved to hear it — I know I’m relieved to say it — but I will not be writing today about childless cat ladies or any of the many MAGA variations on The Handmaid’s Tale.
I will not be writing a paean to selfless politicians who give up their dream — but only after waking to the sound of a full-scale mutiny — of a second term.
I will not be writing about Trump’s ear — was it or wasn’t it a bullet, and isn’t there a doctor somewhere who can tell us for sure? — and certainly not any of his other body parts, not even his short fingers, although they are reliably good for a laugh.
I won’t be writing about the veep search because I’d have to mention that some pundit on some obscure website lists Jared Polis as a legitimate contender. He’s not, of course, although I did like Polis’ line that if Kamala Harris is looking for a “balding, gay Jew from Boulder,” he’s ready.
Today, I write of the Paris Olympics, the only story where the drama and spectacle, not to mention the big money and petty corruption, could possibly compete with the breakneck thrills of this presidential race.
Like many of you, I need at least a small break from the rough and tumble of presidential politics.
So we go to the rough and tumble Olympics, and its long history of politics being played on a far grander scale, but with constant commercial breaks and with, oh, I almost forgot, the greatest athletes in the world playing for the greatest stakes. The competition is guaranteed to either thrill you — I mean, who doesn’t want to see Simone Biles’ twisty comeback tour? — or confound you — as in the case of the newest Olympic sport, which is, I swear, break dancing.
Or, more likely, both.
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I mean, beach volleyball at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. It’s so audacious. It’s so incongruous. It’s so, well, French.
As were the Opening Ceremonies featuring the flotilla of boats on the Seine carrying athletes from 200-plus nations and — if you’re looking for a rooting interest — also the 37 members of the Refugee Olympic team, representing the more than 100 million refugees currently displaced on our typically war-torn and famine-plagued planet.
The opening was suitably picture perfect. They usually pull off the Opening Ceremonies even in cities that aren’t as beautiful as Paris. And, naturally, it rained because the only thing more romantic than a Paris evening is a Paris evening punctuated by raindrops.
When you watch the Olympics, you can almost forget how rife they have been with corruption and scandals and, most of all, commercialism over the years. When the Opening Ceremonies were set to begin, the announcers thanked the sponsors for bringing the first hour commercial-free. What a gesture. What a bunch of companies. The six companies, led, of course, by Coke, settled for having their logos in discrete type — 10 minutes for each — at the top right of the screen.
And before these Olympic games could even begin, life had intervened. We saw three high-speed rail links into Paris sabotaged, causing delays for more than a million passengers. And we saw the Canadian women’s soccer coach sent home for spying on the New Zealand team, with drones no less.
From my vantage point, though, the best thing about these Olympics is how they seemed to have arrived, at least for many Americans, with so little notice. I know. We’ve been, uh, preoccupied. One day, we’re watching an attempted assassination, and now, on the next, we’re off to dressage at Versailles. The mind reels.
And I think the fact that we’ve been so busy will mean that at least a few of the endless up-close-and-personal stories set for broadcast by NBC and a flotilla of aligned stations, might seem a little fresher than usual. As I write this, a friend tells me one of the preview stories is being shot on a snail farm where we’re learning the finer points of eating escargot. You can expect a lot of that.
The TV story will be interesting and not just because NBC is bringing an AI Al Michaels to be the broadcast booth. Read the link. Yes, they’ve cloned the iconic broadcaster’s voice, which will be used on Peacock apparently in the summaries of the day’s events. Do you believe in the, uh, miracle of artificial intelligence?
How about the miracle of streaming? On Peacock, they are apparently going to show every single event live, just because they can — and because they can charge you for the pleasure. So if you really need to watch fencing live, Peacock is there for you. If you need to watch horse dancing — which, as Jason Gay wrote in the Wall Street Journal, long predates break dancing as an Olympic sport — Peacock is there for you. It’s particularly there for you if you might want to watch athletes who aren’t American.
For those of you who don’t need to see every sport live, there will be the usual prime-time lineup of the most compelling stories of the day, during which you can pretend there’s no such thing as the Internet to find out who won. This is nearly always an American-loaded lineup because we’re America and we live where nationalism rules. If you want to watch athletes who aren’t American, Peacock is there for you.
There are great story lines, of course, from Biles and the rest of the women’s gymnastics team to swimmer Katie Ledecky and her many gold medals to the U.S. men’s and women’s basketball team, to track and field, where, if form holds, sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson will leave Paris as an international star.
Back in my sport writing youth, I was lucky to cover five Olympic Games, on four continents. Along the way, I saw the DMZ in Korea 1988, I saw a mob of kangaroos racing my train between Sydney and Melbourne in 2000, I saw and (ate) midnight meals in Barcelona in 1992, I saw the miracle of traffic moving smoothly on LA freeways that were virtually empty of cars in 1984 as millions of residents fled the city.
Oh, and I saw some thrilling sports, too.
But what makes the Olympics so remarkable, as we’ll be reminded constantly for the next two weeks, is the agony and the ecstasy of the athletes who have worked so hard to get there. My favorite moment in the games that I covered was in Barcelona, where agony and ecstasy came together in one unforgettable scene.
It involved an unlikely hero in an unlikely race — Kevin Redmond, a not-exactly-celebrated 400-meter runner out of Britain.
He was running in a semifinal heat when his hamstring gave way. He sank to his knees, head in hand, tears streaming, an Olympic dream shattered. We’ve seen that kind of heartbreak before.
But then in a bit of Olympic-sized inspiration, Redmond decided he would finish the race, that nothing was more important than getting back and up trying. He could barely walk. He could barely hobble. And so he began.
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And then, from high in the stands, a man charged past security guards and made his way onto the track. It was Kevin’s dad, Jim, who would put an arm around his son’s waist and take his son’s hand into his own, as they circled the track together.
Slowly, as more and more of those in the crowd saw what was happening, the cheering turned into a thunderous roar. It beat any gold medal event.
And after they’d finished, the father would reveal what he said to the son: “We started your career together. We’ll finish this race together.”
And so they did.
And so we watch. Because there will be such a moment, or many such moments, this year, too.
And if we’re lucky, no matter what fresh hell the world has in store for us over the next weeks and months, we’ll still be able to say we always had Paris.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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