The Paris Olympics Excuse

After worldwide condemnation for the Dionysus-inspired revelry of the Opening Ceremony in July 2024 for the Paris Olympics, Anne Deschamps, a spokesperson for the Paris Olympics, gave an excuse for the Opening Ceremony. Although tendered as an apology, her statement has been called a non-apology. It wasn’t a non-apology, it was an excuse, an evasion — and a poor one at that.

Anne Deschamps said (translated from French) that there was “never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group” and that their “intent [was] to celebrate community and tolerance”. Let me translate this so-called apology. “We didn’t mean to show any disrespect to any religious group. We meant to celebrate community and tolerance.”

Apologies are needed for behaviour that harms, whether that behaviour is speaking or doing. They aren’t about intentions. Intentions don’t harm; speech and actions do.

After this evasion, Anne Deschamps said, “If people have taken any offence, we are of course really sorry.” I noted that her tone of voice didn’t match the words. Her tone of voice didn’t reveal any sorrow or regret.

And the interesting point about this statement is that it is an indirect verbal attack. It’s almost an “Even …” type of verbal attack pattern, with the “If” functioning as an “Even”, carrying the presupposition that only people with low skills or knowledge (i.e., a stupid person) would take offence at the Opening Ceremony. That presupposition is the hidden attack: only stupid people were offended.

So in addition to Anne Deschamps evading responsibility for the harm done (the offence) and excusing the Opening Ceremony’s actions, her excuse of an apology (pardon the pun) was actually an attack on those who were offended by the Ceremony.

The Opening Ceremony was also supposed to be an interpretation of the Greek God Dionysus that “makes us aware of the absurdity of violence between human beings.” This shows an appalling ignorance of what Dionysus was all about and the violence of the frenzied Dionysian revels. Lots of wine was drunk and various methods used to induce trances in the revellers. The goal was to remove all inhibitions and restraints, freeing the revellers from all societal constraints. The female followers of Dionysus were called maenads, who were known to get so frenzied that they would rip apart any animal that crossed their path. They ripped living animals apart. That, by any definition, is violent.

The actuality of what the Dionysian revels were contradicts what the Opening Ceremony organizers said.

I can sum up Anne Deschamps and the Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony organizers (“Organizers”) attitude: arrogant.

If you hear or read Anne Deschamps excuse and any of what the Organizers said, you now know why you are offended by their excuse and statements — let alone by the Opening Ceremony, itself.

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I Am Still Not a Robot.

The other day — it’s taken me a while to get objective about this — I clicked on an email from X (formerly known as Twitter) to see the post. A very annoying little box asking for my birthdate came up. So I clicked on the “X” in the corner to get rid of it. But it wouldn’t go away.

I don’t like giving my birthdate. It’s private information. It’s MY information. It doesn’t belong to anyone but me.

And let’s not forget all those warning about not giving out private information — especially your birthdate.

I’ll provide my birthdate to those who need to have it, but not just because they ask for it.

And I don’t really trust that “We protect your privacy” blurb. Really? How many times do we hear about breaches into databases? Into very huge, secure places. Like governments. So I don’t really believe that line.

The only reason X would want my birthdate is for demographic information to sell to advertisers. Which brings me to a second important point: I am not a commodity to be bought and sold.

Other sites asks for demographic information, such as age group. Yes, group, not individual particularized birthdates. I give my age group to those sites.

So I got suspicious. Why does X want my birthdate? It can’t be for demographic reasons, because they’d have asked for my age group. (Advertisers don’t want particularized birthdates, just age groups.)

After fuming for about an hour, I relented and tried to enter my birthdate. The nice empty box for my birthdate wouldn’t let me put anything in. Up popped another annoying calendar-month box. The only way to get to my date of birth was by clicking back month by month by month by month.

That has made me very cautious about X. Specifically, the motives and general-intelligence-about-how-people-actually-behave of the person(s) who wrote this particular bit of programming. Why on earth would they do this? It couldn’t be because they might lack the knowledge about how to program, because they’d have to be able to do a lot more complicated things in order to work at any tech company. So that couldn’t be the reason.

Does X want to punish its subscribers?

Stop and think for one second or two. A 10-year old would have to click back at least 120 times to get to the month they were born in. A 20-year old at least 240 times. And if you’re older, a lot more than 240 times. That is not pleasant. It’s an irritant at best, and a punishment at worst.

Who would click back over 240 times to enter a birthdate? Not a real human being. But a robot would have no problem with that.

And I am not a robot!!

So here we have an organization that is waives the freedom banner — specifically, freedom of speech — that insists on having a very personal piece of information in order to have access to its site. Selling our personal information for access is not, and has never been compatible with freedom.

And to make the pain of giving up private information even more excruciating, requiring that we behave like an automated robot and click away for a l-o-n-g time on a button to get access.

I repeat: I am not a robot.

It’ll take a while for my sense of humour to kick in, because this is so irritatingly wrong. I suspect it’ll tie in the “X” on the calendar-month box with the name “X”.

I did without Twitter for years, and I can do without X.

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