Something has been bothering me about the London 2012
Olympics.
It’s not just the saturation media coverage that’s been
counting down seemingly for ever and the lauding of male and female contenders
in sports that neither I nor anyone I know takes anything like a regular
interest in. Nor is it the forthcoming
transport disruption in London, Zil Lanes and all.
It’s only come to me tonight, as I surf Facebook and see the
whooping comments and photographs posted by friends and acquaintances as they
track the inexorably inane progress of the torch, that this is another Diana Moment.
Remember that? The
week of public mortification between the smash and the state funeral; the ad-hoc
shrines and the breakdown in common-sense; and, above all else, the suppression
of dissent. It’s like that again
now. It’s back to being a member of the
French Resistance, where you daren’t give voice to private misgivings, save to
close and trusted fellows, for fear of being denounced.
There is a very heavy and very palpable social pressure to
toe the line and not to moan in public about the (costly) fatuity of it all. To do so is to risk being impugned as a misery
guts. Which, if you think about it, isn’t all too far
removed from the post-Gulag tactics of the late and unlamented rulers of the
USSR, who charged the dissidents of the worker’s paradise with being mentally
ill.
Thankfully, it will all be over in a few weeks but for now:
Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l’automne
Blessent mon cœur
D’une langueur
Monotone.
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