The Paris Olympics are barely underway and Canadians have already experienced the good, bad and ugly at the global event.
In the “good” category, swimming sensation Summer McIntosh won Canada’s first medal at the games — a silver in 400-metre freestyle.
Prior to that, on the night of the opening ceremonies, was the stirring comeback of Canadian singer Celine Dion, who is battling stiff person syndrome, with her first live performance in four years — an emotional rendition of Edith Piaf’s Hymme de l’Amour (Hymn To Love) on the Eiffel Tower, to conclude the opening ceremonies.
The bad is the growing drone-spying scandal swirling around Canada’s reigning, gold-medal-winning women’s soccer team, with coach Bev Priestman and two assistants sent home and FIFA imposing a six-point penalty on the Canadian squad, severely dimming its chances of a repeat on the medal podium.
Adding to the bad news were comments from Canadian soccer officials that drone spying may be systemic, going back years in women’s and men’s soccer, despite unequivocal denials by many current and former players and coaches.
The ugly was whatever possessed the organizers of the Olympics’ opening ceremony to conclude it was a good idea to gratuitously offend Christians around the world with a drag queen parody of Leonardo da Vinci’s rendition of the Last Supper.
We can’t to better than the National Review’s succinct description of the tableau, so we’ll simply borrow it.
As the conservative magazine put it:
“The scene featured some half-naked performers, one in the middle with a halo atop her head, behind a long table. A man who was painted blue, and with only vines covering his genitals, sat in the middle of the table and was surrounded by flowers.”
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The official explanation of the tableau on X wasn’t really helpful.
It described it as “the interpretation of the Greek God Dionysus (the guy painted blue with only vines covering his genitals) makes us aware of the absurdity of violence between human beings.”
Yeah, right. Whatever.
Surely there were better ways to illustrate the Olympic ideals of diversity, inclusion and acceptance than to gratuitously offend many followers of Christianity.
Particularly because we all know what would happen if they had done the same thing to Islam, which would also be wrong.