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Are the Canadian and British media at war over the 2012 Olympics?
Are we getting a healthy dose of proof that turnabout is fair play? That revenge is a dish best served cold? Will the 2012 Olympic Summer Games be marred by an international food fight in the media cafeteria?
Canada versus Britain. Vancouver versus London. Canadian snark versus British sauciness.
Recall, if you will, that way back in 2010, when the Games of Vancouver got off to a rather rough start, it was well noted that many members of the British media were plenty catty about it.
In particular, a piece in The Guardian was eye-catching; a scathing indictment of both the serious (the death of luger Nodar Kumaritashvili in a training run) and the much less so (ticket sale snafus). The headline: "Vancouver Games Continue Downhill Slide From Disaster To Calamity" signalled that a pretty good hatchet piece lay underneath it, and it did. The Guardian seemed to take great delight in supposing that the games of 2010 might very well go down as "the worst in Olympic history."
Canadian pride was dented repeatedly by the blistering Brits and few have forgotten it.
As the 2012 games begin, a few Canadian media types have, with Vancouver in mind, taken to firing a few shots in the other direction, over the struggles that organizers have faced in the run up to the opening ceremonies.
Security fiascoes and London's own ticketing problems do not go undetected, do not go unpunished.
Revenge, Canada. Revenge.
The Globe And Mail's Jeff Blair, under the headline "Jeers, Mate: Letdown at London 2012" writes about the security, transit and spectator problems that have already been in evidence:
Can't move people. Can't keep them safe. Can't even get them their freaking tickets. London never was going to be able to compete with the 2008 Beijing Games for logistical wizardry — democracy's funny that way — but the trick now is to prevent people from casting wistful looks ahead to 2016 and Rio de Janeiro.
Then, at the end of the piece, the observation that London may well be in for as rough a ride as it gave Vancouver:
No, London Bridge isn't falling down, but there is a feeling that these might be the first Games wheezing just to get to the opening ceremony. Welcome to the club, London. Ridicule is a dish best served cold.
Which brings me back to that possible international food fight in the media centre. No telling if the war of words will actually spill over into plates of poutine being fired from the tipped over tables of makeshift trenches formed in the Canadian corner, only to be met with a volley of bangers and/or mash from the other side of no man's land.
Blair's poke to the ribs of the British seems almost too damn polite, when compared to the knee-slapping glee coming from a column written by the Toronto Star's Rosie DiManno.
In it, she makes no secret of her delight in looking for slag-worthy screw ups. Nor does she apologize for it.
If we were that kind of a girl reporter — which, come to think of it, we are. So, tit for tat and all that, wot? Bit of a bungle, rather. Indeed, a new word has been coined 'round here: Omni-shamble. As in, the "Omni-shamble Games,'' a typically sesquipedalian way of saying: "oh-oh."
A further read of DiManno's columnistic chirp reveals a writer who's memory of the British attack of '10 has not faded.
Two years ago, a snippy 'n' stroppy British media didn't even wait for the Winter Olympics to get started before turning thumbs down on Vancouver 2010, banging off their hysterically critical dispatches, pungent with dire predictions, bemoaning and bewailing, patronizing as only the Brits can be.
On another front, there's a Canadian objection to the British media generally claiming the London Olympics are the first social media games in the history of the Olympiad.
Graeme Menzies, writing in the Vancouver Sun takes exception to the claim:
The Brits can be as dismissive of our Olympics as they wish, but Canadians can be proud that the Vancouver Olympics were the first to be live-tweeted, the first Olympic Organizing Committee to ever have an official mobile app (with more than one million downloads from more than 50 countries) and the first to have an official Facebook page (with over 1.1 million followers), to name a few firsts.
Menzies, by the way, was the Director of Online Communications and Social Media for the 2010 Olympics, so you can understand why he'd be frosted by the notion that 2012 marks the "first" of the social media games. What can be truly said is, not that London 2012 is the first, but that it is the most active in the realm of social media. It's even being dubbed, by some, "The Socialympics."
Perhaps not when it comes to British media and Canadian media. Who knows how far this column writing cold war will go? For them, it may just become the "Anti-Socialympics."
So, a warning: Keep your head down in the media cafeteria. At the very least, don't get caught between the Brits and Canucks.
