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| washingtonpost.com - Anne Applebaum (washingtonpost.com)
"Closing ceremony of Beijing Olympics draws world attention, praise." That was how Xinhua, the Chinese press agency, described Sunday's final Olympic celebration, and for once it wasn't exaggerating. Just before they moved rapidly on to the next mass television event, in Denver, American headline writers did indeed pause to heap attention and praise on China's Olympics. The Post called the closing ceremony "China's Show of Power." These were "Truly Exceptional Games," trumpeted NBC's Olympic Web site (not exactly unexpectedly). The Los Angeles Times kept it simple: "Beijing's Olympic Triumph." But Americans were not unique: Xinhua quoted Mongolians, South Koreans, Pakistanis and Iraqis all saying more or less the same thing.
Forty years ago this week, on the night of Aug. 20-21, 1968, thousands of tanks and hundreds of thousands of Soviet and Warsaw Pact soldiers entered Czechoslovakia. The goal of the invasion was straightforward: to prevent a Soviet satellite from carrying out democratic reforms that, had they been allowed to succeed, could have threatened the legitimacy of the governments of other Soviet satellites and, indeed, of the Soviet Union itself.
Cymbals clashed; a giant scroll unfurled. There were fireworks, kites, "ancient soldiers" marching in formation, modern dancers bending their bodies into impossible shapes, astronauts, puppets, children, multiple high-tech gizmos. The Olympic opening ceremonies showed you China as China wants you to see it.
For the best possible illustration of why Islamic terrorism may one day be considered the least of our problems, look no farther than the BBC's split-screen coverage of yesterday's Olympic opening ceremonies. On one side, fireworks sparkled, and thousands of exotically dressed Chinese dancers bent their bodies into the shape of doves, the cosmos and more. On the other side, gray Russian tanks were shown rolling into South Ossetia, a rebel province of Georgia. The effect was striking: Two of the world's rising powers were strutting their stuff.
Although more than three decades have passed since the winter of 1974, when unbound, hand-typed samizdat versions of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago" began circulating in what used to be the Soviet Union, the emotions they stirred remain today. Usually, readers were given only 24 hours to finish the lengthy manuscript -- the first-ever historical account of the Soviet concentration camp system -- before it had to be passed on to the next person. That meant spending an entire day and night absorbed in Solzhenitsyn's sometimes eloquent, sometimes angry prose, not an experience anyone was likely to forget.
"This is the hour of Europe."
Because they are so clearly designed for the convenience of large testing companies, I had always assumed that multiple-choice exams, the bane of any fourth-grader's existence, were a quintessentially American phenomenon. But apparently I was wrong. According to a report last week by the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom, it seems that the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Education finds them useful, too. Here, for example, is a multiple-choice question from a recent edition of a Saudi fourth-grade textbook, "Monotheism and Jurisprudence," in a section that attempts to teach children to distinguish between "true" and "false" belief in God:
"Odd." That's what German Chancellor Angela Merkel said when told of Barack Obama's plan to deliver a major campaign speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, right where the Berlin Wall used to be, where Ronald Reagan once famously called upon Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall," and not far from where John F. Kennedy declared, "Ich bin ein Berliner" -- "I am a Berliner" -- to show his solidarity with the inhabitants of what used to be a divided city. One can see her point: We, too, would find it odd if foreign politicians made campaign speeches in front of the Lincoln Memorial or asked to use the Washington Monument as a political backdrop.
Myself, I was rooting for Spain in the finals: The Spanish economy is in the doldrums at the moment, and I thought a win might cheer up the Spaniards -- which it did, judging by Sunday's post-victory all-night street party. My son, however, was rooting for Germany: This, paradoxically, is because he is half-Polish, and two of the German players are actually Poles, born in Poland, who speak Polish to one another on the field. One of them -- Lukas Podolski -- scored both of the goals during the Poland-Germany game three weeks ago. Germany won that game, 2-0.
Perhaps it's just a coincidence, but in the past few days, I've felt overwhelmed by a tsunami of commentary, all of which purports to prove the fundamental nastiness of Barack Obama or, alternatively, the deep unlikability of John McCain. You thought our presidential candidates were nice guys, regular guys, guys with whom you'd like to sit down and have a beer? Guess what, lots of people are now telling me: They aren't.
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