The Olympics are sweet. When else do you get to see a country blatantly foregoing its usually tactful ideological dissemination in favour of pop-y, widest-possible-appeal all-out stunts of patriotism? Well, besides war, that is. But seriously, this was certainly the most flawless Olympics I’ve ever heard of or experienced.

The shot of Alexandre Bilodeau during that (embarassingly-bad-French’d) speech got to my emotions more than any other simply because it seemed, to me, to be totally spontaneous, humbling and sincere. Surely there’s no greater way than video (of an actual event) to instantly inspire an emotional experience in distant viewers. I mean, when Crosby scored—I kid you not—my whole family jumped in unison! Stephen Harper would be so damned proud. And I can’t help but think he is: Vancouver 2010 went off virtually without a hitch—with Canada on top. A broken record here, a touching personal story there, world attention in between, and a spotlight on our Indigenous righteousness whereever possible. Maybe the closing ceremonies could have been a little more tongue-in-cheek—sure the announcers made a strong point of it throughout—but I’m not so sure I would’ve picked up on that had the TV been on another network, or had I been from another country, for that matter.

I’m still perplexed by Lloyd Robinson’s (twice repeated) comment that the Olympics are so great because “no one”, not the “government” and not any “big companies” told us to watch them, so we just do it ourselves, more than any other TV event, obviously because we are so passionate about the athletes (whose names we only just learned (and will soon forget)) and this great country we call home. This might strike you as conspiracy theory, but if you think the Olympics (via TV) is (just) about sports, then you’re either watching all your footage as downloaded from torrents, with the commericals removed, or you’re too fucking excited to care. I digress: I can already see myself starting to give up on my hardcore moral values in favour of ones that are more socially appealing—I’ll look back on myself at 21, this blog post even, as being naïve, no doubt—but fuck I wish I could figure out why I have to do this. Here’s to hoping this will give my future self a good shock back into reality, if need be.