Critic's Grade: F

The 2008 Olympics were a combination of the sublime and the vulgar.The sublime was brought to you by China,the vulgar part courtesy of NBC.
Americans will never know what the Olympics really were like as they were prevented from seing them by the wrecking crew at NBC.
In the NBC version,it was about commercials,Bob Costas,Coby Briant,Mike Phelps,George Bush,and a revived Cold War.
The first intrusive commercials were felt during the opening ceremonies.America was the only country where you could not see the entire ceremony,because as much as 25% was lost to commercials.
The comments on foreign TV were that the opening ceremony was sublime ,beyond all expectations, visual pyrotechnics illustrating 5000 years of Chinese history.Not according to Bob Costas and his wrecking crew.
They talked against what was being shown,if the theme was harmony they wanted to say that the reality was disharmony-dissidents-Tibetans.
Many purchased a HDTV or home theatre just for the Olympics.Well,NBC decided to deliver HD programming in giant chunks of 6-8 hours.This means that if you had recorded the opening ceremonies it was erased within 24 hrs by new content. It means that at the navigation speeds allowed by DirecTV or most providers,it would take as much as 2 hours to wade through Bob Costas,commercials,Coby Bryant,and Mike Phelps to see if there was anything worth seeing.
There are over 200 countries participating but all you saw was the US in any competition where they might win,usually against the Chinese.If the Chinese won,they were cheaters and communists.If they won more gold medals,then NBC would switch to total medal count.
In practice,the only way to search through the 8 hour chunks of recorded Olympics dumped on you by NBC was on the Dish satellite system.They have a remote that can fast forward at up to 300x.Using either DirecTV or Time WArner Cable was like swimming through molasses.
Then there was the revived Cold War against China and Russia,the flag waving,jingoism,fake patriotism.
How bad was this?Lets compare it to the Nazis.
Neither Adolf Hitler,nor the swastica,nor the German flag,or German national anthem were featured in the 1936 German OLympics.There was no crass commercialism.
The facts are that even totalitarian regimes can show some class during the Olympics.Which is more than can be said for NBC.

All Reviews by Fred Landis
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