I generally didn’t watch the Summer Olympics.  I’m not “anti-sports” I just am more a fan of the Winter games.  But I did catch some of the races, high jumps, and BMX racing.  But while I turned off the opening ceremonies after I saw NIH beds and nurses and an ode to the Nanny State, I found the closing ceremonies more to my liking as a spectacle but pretty sad nonetheless.

Music is near and dear to my heart and I’ve been a huge rock fan since my early teens so when a friend told me “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd was being performed I knew I’d have to watch.

Most of the songs were performed nicely but it wasn’t quite what I was expecting.

I saw rappers popping out of the back of Rolls Royces (no longer owned by a British company), Spice “Girls” who are pushing 40 but singing songs written for them to perform when they were 20, only one surviving member of Pink Floyd (Nick Mason – the drummer) performing “Wish You Were Here” which is a sort of bitter World War II song, and The Who singing a song about revolution (My Generation) in from of the Establishment (the Olympics).

And Russell Brand was lip synching Lucy in the Skies With Diamonds which has what, exactly, to do with the Olympics?

The entire idea, because the Olympics were being hosted in England, was to celebrate British culture.  But I have to wonder how throwing all this random stuff, which originated from England, up on the stage was supposed to amount to anything substantial?

To me it seemed like someone had taken the Pink Floyd album Dark Side of the Moon and made you listen to The Great Gig in the Sky without having first heard Time which immediately precedes it.

The Great Gig in the Sky is a wonderful piece of music but ripped from its proper context it just sounds like a screaming woman.

And that’s sort of what the Olympic closing ceremonies were… England completely taken out of context and, as a result, totally unintelligible to the ignorant.

The sound bite closing ceremony.

This is how ignorance spreads… or begins.

Makes me wonder how much these has infected our politics.