Olympics Organizers Panic, Apologize After Mocking Jesus' Last Supper; Then Make Situation Even Worse
How can you make a bad situation worse via an apology? When the apology is so obviously the coward’s way out.
In an apology after the opening ceremonies of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games were marred by an anti-Christian mockery of “The Last Supper,” Paris 2024 representative Anne Descamps said that the tableau did what it was supposed to do — but she’s terribly sorry if you misinterpreted their mockery of Christianity.
You’ve probably seen the offending tableau, featuring women and drag queens (and a child) in a scene that looked an awful lot like Leonardo da Vinci’s mural, “The Last Supper,” which depicted the titular biblical event.
🚨Just in: The 2024 Olympic Games featured imagery involving women and drag queens at the opening ceremony re-creating the last supper.pic.twitter.com/xuCflvlJT4
— The Calvin Coolidge Project (@TheCalvinCooli1) July 26, 2024
But the organizers swore, quite improbably, that it had nothing to do with either the painting or the event.
Here’s how USA Today described it: “During Friday’s ceremony, there was a moment on the Debilly Bridge over the Seine when the camera cut to French DJ and producer Barbara Butch, who describes herself as a ‘love activist.’ Butch wore a blue dress with a silver headdress and as the camera panned out, she was flanked by drag queens on both sides. Later appeared a nearly naked man painted in blue − a portrayal of Dionysus, the god of wine-making, vegetation, fertility and ecstasy − on a dinner plate surrounded by food. He then sang as the people around him danced, and it turned into a runway scene where models walked across.”
Furthermore, the official Olympic Games account said that “The interpretation of the Greek God Dionysus makes us aware of the absurdity of violence between human beings.”
The interpretation of the Greek God Dionysus makes us aware of the absurdity of violence between human beings. #Paris2024 #OpeningCeremony pic.twitter.com/FBlQNNUmvV
— The Olympic Games (@Olympics) July 26, 2024
After it became clear nobody was buying this, Thomas Jolly, artistic director of the opening ceremonies, said the following day that there was no intent to “be subversive or shock people or mock people.”
“The idea was to have a pagan celebration connected to the gods of Olympus. You will never find in me a desire to mock and denigrate anyone,” he said.
I’m not quite sure who is dumber: The people who believe this explanation, or the people who believed you’d believe this explanation.
Nevertheless, this was their story and they were sticking to it, dagnabbit. The problem was that, in the Christian community, nobody cared what was coming out of the mouths of obvious liars.
As USA Today noted, the French Bishops’ Conference called it a “mockery and derision of Christianity,” adding its thoughts were with those “hurt by the outrageousness and provocation of certain scenes.” Bishop Robert Barron of Minnesota said in a viral video that the opening ceremony desecrated “a very central moment in Christianity.” And Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said it was “shocking and insulting” that this was allowed to be part of the opening ceremonies.
So, we got Descamps telling us all that the Parisian Olympic organizers are really sorry if you got the idea that they were doing what they were obviously doing and not what they claim to have been doing.
“Clearly there was never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group. On the contrary, I think [with] Thomas Jolly, we really did try to celebrate community tolerance,” Descamps said.
“Looking at the result of the polls that we shared, we believe that this ambition was achieved. If people have taken any offense, we are, of course, really, really sorry.”
Yeah, “of course.”
I understand that the French believe that Jerry Lewis was a genius and that Renault makes acceptable cars, but there are certain sentiments too idiotic for even the most Gallic of minds to entertain, and this is definitely one of them.
Descamps is essentially asking adherents of the world’s most numerous religious group to believe that the artistic director of the opening ceremonies for the Olympics was completely unaware of arguably the most famous artistic interpretation of one of the most important events of that religious group’s Holy Scripture.
We are instead supposed to believe that Thomas Jolly, along with all the drag queens, DJs and “love activists” involved in this, absolutely went into it thinking of Dionysus and the Greek pantheon — and nothing else.
And, of course, if you got some silly idea in your head that it might have occurred to one of these apparently very dim French people, at any point in time, that this tableau looked an awful lot like “The Last Supper” — which it most certainly did not, and that’s totally a coincidence — their apologies that you lacked their cultural sensibilities.
Our apologies for being such artistic philistines are expected to be forthcoming, if one is to judge by Descamps’ language.
This is the coward’s apology: Sorry if you mistook our blatantly obvious message for its blatantly obvious intention, because that clearly wasn’t what we meant.
It puts the onus on the offended for failing to understand the completely innocent intentions that very clearly didn’t exist.
If you didn’t see “The Last Supper” here, you are 1) a moron or 2) willfully blind.
Descamps and Jolly, I imagine, are neither, but they’re counting on everyone to pretend to be the latter in order to not seem like the former. In doing so, they’ve only made things worse for themselves. Nice work, I guess.
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