Let The Phoney Sentimentality Begin!

Yes, it's that time again. Once every four years, the world puts everything on hold and goes ape over the spectacle of the Olympic Games. Well, almost everything. The business of making money takes a holiday for no-one; indeed, during the Games, it probably even goes into overdrive.

And of course, the megacorps are pulling out all the stops in order to pull our patriotic heartstrings and bleed us dry of our hard-earned. All of a sudden, foreign multinationals are proudly Australian and propping every geriatric in a military uniform they kind find in front of a camera in order to assure us that they, too, share the ANZAC spirit. Naturally, this is all about celebrating the festival of the Games and supporting our guys and gals in Beijing; however, if you could see your way to buying one of their burgers, or patronising one of their shopping centres, or taking off in one of their planes, that would be nice, too.

Not that Australian companies are beyond this cynical artifice, either. Suddenly, every golden-haired glamour girl and pretty boy in a swim suit or track lycra is the quintessential Australian, representative of all our hopes and dreams - and, naturally, we're all behind them because sporting prowess is really the pinnacle of any nation's evolutionary index. So of course we'll buy all their sponsors' products, because doing less would hardly be patriotic, would it?

If you think I'm being overly cynical, watch the television broadcast of the Olympics for even a brief period, and you'll see what I mean. If the patently parochial (and frequently mindless) commentary isn't enough to do your head in, the mushy, saccharine blandishments of the commercials will have you gagging on your vomit even as you reach for the cyanide pills. No kidding, if I see one more ad about how these faceless, exploitative corporations really do care about all the Mums and Dads and kiddies out there, and how they are sooooooo grateful for all our support over the years, I'll throw myself off the top of my stack of large-print Das Kapital editions.

To be fair, it's not all bad. One of the two public broadcasters in Oz has somehow managed to snaffle secondary broadcasting rights to the Games - which is to say they've been assigned all the team and non-swimming, non-track events the commercial broadcaster thought too obscure or insufficiently ratings-friendly to cover. But I quite like this. It means you get to see stuff that otherwise would be ignored, and the level of patriotic hyperbole is kept to a bearable minimum. Except when they, too, have to cut to a commercial break so their "broadcast partners" can flog their overpriced - but eminently Australian - wares.

Oh well, it will be all over in a few days, and then we can get back to business as usual. In the meantime, if you listen very carefully, beneath the roar of the crowds and the screeching platitudes of the sports journalists, you'll notice another sound, a kind of background noise to the whole Games. It's the sound of cash registers ringing.

K'ching!

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote of the Day: Capitalism - survival of the fattest. (Anonymous)