It’s been a strange Olympics. The most inspiring physical performance to date has been Celine Dion, back from a debilitating neurological disorder, serenading Paris upon the Eiffel Tower. Down below on the clay courts, Rafael Nadal, beloved like Celine, is no longer able to perform.
As Celine might suggest to Rafa musically, it’s Time to Say Goodbye. There was the intense monitoring of fecal pollution in the Seine. After some postponements, E.
coli levels in the river dropped sufficiently to permit the triathletes to plunge in. They conceded that the post-sewage Seine did not taste great. Canada’s women’s soccer team is mired in a cheating scandal about monitoring of a different kind, using drones to surveil opponents.
That too stinks. In boxing it is chromosomes that are monitored. Imane Khelif from Algeria had been disqualified from the women’s world championships last year for failing a gender eligibility test; she has XY chromosomes , according to the president of the International Boxing Association.
Khelif was allowed to compete in Paris and battered her Italian opponent so hard that she quit after 46 seconds “to save my life.” That’s all before we get to the religious scandal. No, I don’t mean the blasphemy at the opening ceremonies.
Blasphemy is an attack on piety. I mean the perennial scourge of hypocrisy. Blasphemy is usually hurled by non-believers against believers; hypocrisy undermines the faith from within by those, as Isaiah prophesied, who ho.