The Un-Bastard Olympics

I’ve taken my words from the previous post, deep-fried them in boiling excrement and devoured them humbly and with penitent apology.  Danny Boyle should be fucking knighted.  He set the scene for an Olympics that is proving to be so utterly fantastic that nearly all of us have thrown off the cynical scorn that can often form a lynchpin of our popular culture and national mood and replaced it with an out-pouring of the deeper and genuinely warm, celebratory and harmonious British characteristics.

And because of this wonderful coming together in a communion of admiration for Great Britain’s athletes (and that man Boyle’s unpretentious bulls-eye in aiming to capture the spirit of our history, culture and values) it has served to make those dissenters even more emphatic bastards for all their criticism.

It remains true that I still can’t work out what the fuck is going on in sailing, that the boats seem to be floating haphazardly on the water until a commentator declares a winner, and I may never watch it again; but I cheered like the rest of you to see Ainslie bob his way towards a gold.

It remains true, that Judo shall never appear to me to be anything beyond pyjama wrestling, but that is my failing; and our two medallists Bryant and Gibbons gain my ignorant applause.

Similarly, much as I have failed to be won over by the merits of Handball or Basketball, I have found new enjoyment in the likes of volleyball, weightlifting, badminton, table tennis, etc…

I have become un-bastardised, temporarily.  But others haven’t.  If you happen to browse your way through Twitter whilst putting arse-moulds into your sofa in front of the Olympics, you can get some sense of the national mood and the views and opinions out there.  And from this, you find in those dark and putrid corners some of humanity’s charmless turds.  The Tory MP Aiden Burley was the first to emerge and was rightly castigated by the nation for his ill-conceived politically-biased and borderline-racist outburst, which remains in the public domain despite the backlash.  But joining him are other flavours of bastard.

For instance, those blokey blokes who need to pair their applause for Jessica Ennis with some irrelevant comment about her looks.  I bet she loves looking through her Twitter mentions list to see that so many men “would”.  How reassuring that all her hard work has given her the opportunity to be sexually perved over by so many evolutionary throw-backs.  Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I switched on the women’s beach volleyball with an ulterior motive, but I wouldn’t sleazily slurp all over these athletes on a social network even if that’s how I felt;  which I didn’t, because the sport itself distracted me from the skimpy outfits and well-toned bodies.  Almost completely anyway.

Any event involving other countries brings out the xenophobic strains in the worst of us.  Fortunately, our successes have probably saved us having to endure too much overt disrespect towards the Germans and French (we’re beating them, that’s why!)  However, Andy Murray’s gold (and silver) brought out a backlash in which phrases like “surly Jock prick” were deemed acceptable by a good few wankers on Twitter.  Because…what?  He’s proud to be Scottish?  He’s serious rather jovial during post-match interviews?  He’s not pretty like Jessica Ennis?

Obviously, there remains a few miserable gits who still begrudge the money spent on this event in a time of economic crisis.  They peddle the simplistic utilitarian argument that belittles the powerful impact sport (or the arts) can have on people in terms of inspiring personal ambition, fostering good will in society and bringing pleasure to our lives.  That old crap about how every penny should be spent on housing people and feeding people from the hypocrites who don’t in fact abstain from spending money on their own pleasures in life rather than giving it away to the vulnerable.  Agreed, the costs against current cuts to welfare services is a debate; but I fucking hate the absolutism of sound-bite arguments you get from some misguided twats, again particularly on Twitter.

So, sweeping that little pile of moaners into a corner, let’s get on with feeling good about the country, about each other and about the wonderful achievements of people who have worked harder and shown more sacrifice and commitment that many of us ever have.