Tuesday, August 12, 2008

The Olympics Falsified

At ward FHE last night we were watching the Olympics. I began mentioning some of the many things happening that cause a distortion of reality involving the Olympics. One of the girls there was incredulous of my information and as more keeps popping up daily I thought I'd take this chance to inform you, my dear readers, about the lie that is the Olympics.

1. Fake Coverage. NBC's coverage of the opening ceremony was altered so as to show the various nations in a different order than they came out. At least the version they have posted on their website is different than the official order in which the teams were to appear. From the video on the NBC website you can see the US team on the infield waiting before the NBC video shows the US team enter the stadium. There doesn't seem to be any official news coverage of this, but see the slashdot story here: http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/09/2231231

2. Fake Fireworks. Apparently the fireworks show that the world saw for the opening ceremony is not the fireworks the people in Beijing saw. The one broadcast to the world was computer generated. The official story is that the they thought it would be too dangerous to film the fireworks live using helicopters, so they faked it. See: http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Beijing-Olympics-Opening-Ceremony-Faked-Firework-Footprints-Added-For-TV/Article/200808215075291?lpos=World%2BNews_3&lid=ARTICLE_15075291_Beijing%2BOlympics%2BOpening%2BCeremony%2BFaked%253A%2BFirework%2BFootprints%2BAdded%2BFor%2BTV

3. Fake Singing. The cute, "flawless" (quote from the man in charge) little 9 year old girl singing at the opening ceremony was lip-syncing to the voice of a 7 year old girl. The 7 year old girl does not look good enough to be displayed to the world. See: http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/08/12/oly.kids/index.html

4. Fake Weather. The Chinese government fired 1104 rain dispersal rockets leading up to the opening ceremony to prevent rain from disrupting the festivities. Ok, so this one is actually kind of cool. See: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-08/09/content_9079637.htm

3 comments:

TopHat said...

I'm so sick of stuff like this. Why do they have to lie to the rest of the world?

erin said...

If the US was shown first, nobody would watch the rest of it! I mean, we're already staying up to watch it; might as well make us stay up as late as possible!

I don't really care so much about the singing lie. Of course the Chinese are going to choose the better-looking little girl.

The fireworks don't really surprise me. They seemed a little too real on TV...

Eliza said...

When I watched it on tv the commentators said when we were watching the footprint fireworks that we were basically watching an animation. So...they were at least up front about that.