Remember how breathtaking the Olympic opening ceremonies were?
Well, you can have your breath back. Turns out they were a little TOO breathtaking.
Turns out, according to Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times, that those Chinese and Olympic flags dramatically snapping in the wind were, um, snapping in a wind artificially created by fans or something planted in the flagpoles.
And the dazzling fireworks exploding above the Bird's Nest, the Olympic Stadium?
Turns out the Chinese digitially enhanced them to make them look more spectacular on TV than they actually were in person.
And the little girl who so sweetly sang "Ode to the Motherland"?
Turns out she was lip-synching, because the little girl who really sang the song was not as photogenic.
So a whole chunk of what you saw was fake, which makes you wonder about the rest of it, like the guy who ran around the rim of the stadium to light the cauldron. Did he really do that, or was that a digital enhancement, too?
The whole thing makes you wonder if Stephen Spielberg really should have been hired to choroegraph the ceremonies. After all, it would have right in the wheelhouse for the guy who gave the world the fake shark in "Jaws."
Looks like another world record has been set in Beijing.
Only five days in, and already these Games have, ahem, jumped the shark.
-- Ben Smith
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