When I saw why the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony was trending on Saturday afternoon, I was depressed to realize I was going to have to write a column about it.
For those who missed it, the opening ceremony of the Olympics featured a fashion segment that included drag performers seated on one side of a long table. Immediately, a furious narrative began to form: these drag performers were mocking The Last Supper! Boycott the Olympics! Release the hounds! Lock up your daughters!
Almost immediately, cooler heads tried to point out that the tableau was not intended to depict The Last Supper, but rather a Greek bacchanal. As evidence for this, there were more than 13 people in attendance and a big blue guy dressed like Carmen Miranda was lying across the middle of the table, an individual that most Biblical scholars would likely agree was not a documented apostle.
Why a bacchanal? Probably because the Olympics began in ancient Greece, so it would make sense to depict a famous ancient Greek thing. Why was it flashy and weird and gay? Because this year the summer Olympics are taking place in Paris, not Salt Lake City.
But it was too late. The outrage machine had latched on, and everyone from Elon Musk to Donald Trump Jr. expressed that the Olympics were now woke and Satanic and whatever else. Let this be a lesson to anyone who decides to congregate on one side of a table: the battle lines have been drawn.
By the time this column goes to print, this tempest in a teapot will likely be long forgotten and we’ll all have moved onto the next ridiculous outrage. But I’d like to linger on this one for a moment longer just to pose a question:
Isn’t this exhausting?
Isn’t it exhausting to view every moment in life through a filter of anger? To analyze every news story, every quote, every image not on its own merits, but in order to scour it for a toehold you can latch on to and feel offended about?
I can’t imagine how tiring it must be. I know how tiring it is to watch it from the sidelines.
And let us be clear, this is not solely a conservative issue. I have friends who teach at liberal arts colleges, and they’re all in the midst of a slow-rolling nightmare in which every single sentence they utter must be carefully vetted lest a student take offense. Don’t describe a situation as “crazy” because that’s offensive to people with mental illness. If someone says something objectionable, be sure to correct them immediately because if you don’t, you’re complicit and just as guilty as they are. And God help you if you mess up because at the very least, you’re going to have a series of meetings with the student in which they respond to your microaggression by bombarding you with macroaggressions in the form of criticizing your teaching style, your ethics, and your moral fiber.
I realize this may sound like an exaggeration to some. I assure you, it is not, and at some (not all) college campuses, it is widespread.
The hilarious irony is that those at the margins of the right and those at the margins of the left are operating from the exact same playbook. Their ideologies are wildly different, but their methods are the same. They’re professional victims in search of an oppressor, inflating every minor transgression, real or imagined, into a war against their deeply-held beliefs.
Most importantly, they either don’t understand context or they don’t believe in it. Intent does not matter to these folks, only the most simplistic face-value appearance. It doesn’t matter that the Olympics’ opening ceremony wasn’t intended to depict The Last Supper; all that matters is it kind of looked like it if you squint, which is every bit as bad.
Who has this kind of time and energy? Isn’t it hard enough to make a living and keep a roof over your head without seeking out things to get bent out of shape over? Don’t we have enough real problems in the world that we don’t have to make up culture war nonsense to fight over?
I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. By the time this article runs, it will likely be swept away beneath the tidal wave of Facebook’s algorithms because Ben Shapiro will have reported that Mr. Peanut wears mascara, just the latest volley in the endless war against our American ideals.
