Can I have my brain back now? I enjoyed the Olympics, and my impression is that most Britons did so too. Holidaying at home, I noticed people in pubs and shops delighting in unusual celebrities and unusual challenges, especially from the Paralympians. With Bradley Wiggins' success in the Tour de France and Andy Murray's in New York, it made for a satisfying summer of sport.
Yet I saw nothing to justify the hysteria, the sobbing with joy and weeping with ecstasy, of the London media and politicians. The grasping for national pride and pseudo-psychological significance exaggerated the event and cheapened the athletes' achievement. As for the prime minister asking the Games minister, Jeremy Hunt, to run the NHS "because of the Olympics", it was worthy of Caligula.
Mayor Boris Johnson's hilarious speech to the London crowd on Monday shamelessly upstaged David Cameron's. The latter had modestly suggested the London Games would be remembered "for hundreds of years" and showed Britain could "do great things … and take on the world and, yes, we can win". Johnson went berserk. He bellowed of a nation in paroxysms of joy, of orgasms on tube trains and songs on sofas, or vice versa. Both men shamelessly hijacked the games, acclaiming a nation on a shining path to collective recovery. They were like Soviet leaders lauding the virtues of higher tractor production.
(Guardian, September 11, 2012)