Now do Mohammad, monsieur

Glenn Reynolds explains why the opening ‘ceremony’ for the Paris Olympics is exactly what its producers and directors intended, belated apologies being worth nothing:

There were efforts to defend the debacle, but the truth is revealed by the airbrushing that followed, as the sponsors initiated a massive takedown effort, using copyright claims to get videos of the ceremony struck from services like YouTube and X. If they thought their work was good, why would they hide it?

Well, because it stank. And — and this is the most important part — it was designed to stink. Lousy culture like this is a power statement (“look what we can get away with!”) and also a convenient benchmark: One needs little in the way of talent to produce such an exhibition. Chutzpah will do.

Why was it designed to stink? Again, power. A friend pointed out that the only good recent Olympic opening ceremonies were in Sochi, Russia, and in Beijing. Those governments, whatever their many flaws, wanted to present a positive message about their nations and their cultures to the world. They wanted to portray themselves as rising powers, full of cultural vigor.

Ceremonies like the Paris opener, on the other hand, are intended to do just the opposite. They are intended to mock and denigrate the underlying Western culture, which even atheists like Richard Dawkins admit is Christian. This, we’re told, is “brave.” Or they pretend surprise that anyone is offended, but as the French say, Ils sont toujours au courant, meaning, “They’re always aware.”

And, as we all know, they’d never mock Islam in a spirit of “inclusion.” There will be no blue-painted obese Prophet Muhammads. Partly that’s out of fear — unlike Christians, Muslims tend to respond to mockery with violence aimed at the mockers — and partly it comes from the belief that mocking non-Western culture is somehow racist.

But there’s more than just anti-Christian bigotry here. As Eric S. Raymond tweeted: “What was on display here wasn’t anti-Christianity, it was a compulsion to defecate all over any source of meaning and value in favor of a depraved narcissism. … We have let the mentally ill game our tolerance for too long. It’s time to start stuffing them back into asylums.”