2 Thursday February 3 2022 | the timestimes2
Trapped in
the Olympic
loop — if
I leave I’ll be
in detention
The Beijing Winter Games have begun
and Owen Slot, chief sports writer of
The Times, finds himself in a world of
strict rules and man-made snow
O
h, Whoopi. I’ve
always liked
her well
enough. I liked
her as that nun
and I liked her
as that psychic
in Ghost. But
now I might not enjoy Whoopi
Goldberg’s nun or psychic quite so
fully. If at all. There may be what
I call The Great Closing Down.
As in, “Shall we watch Sister Act
tonight?” Hmm. How does “no”
sound? That’s how it works.
This week she was suspended
from ABC’s The View, a Loose
Women-type television show, for
her remarks on the Holocaust.
She said the Nazi genocide of
Jews was about “man’s
inhumanity to man” and “isn’t
about race” as “these are two
groups of white people”.
Elsewhere, I should add, a
school in Tennessee has banned
the Holocaust graphic novel
Maus, and a Texas school has said
that if they have to teach the
Holocaust they should also teach
an “opposing” view. They’re
totally in luck. There’s a book
written by the chap who was in
charge of it that covers all that
nicely. I am minded to add that
perhaps the class could indulge in
a “living history” experiment,
time-travel back to Amsterdam
circa 1942-44 and punch Anne
Frank in the face. May as well.
(The Great Closing Down, you
should be aware, is often
accompanied by The Great Fury.)
But back to Whoopi, although
whatever I say will have been said
better in David Baddiel’s brilliant
book Jews Don’t Count, just so
we’re clear. With her “not about
race” remark, as well as the one
about “two groups of white
people”, she is saying
that Jews can pass as
non-Jews
while black
people can’t pass
as non-black. I
think. And
“passing” is a thing
among Jews. It was
extremely important
to my parents’generation. My own mother
(extended family wiped out) and
father (fought in the war, wouldn’t
talk about it) were delighted to
“pass” (certainly in their early
years together; they were more
confident later).
I can remember once they
came home from somewhere or
other and were thrilled no one
had spotted that they were
Jewish. My grandfather even
changed our family name from
Rosenthal to Ross to help in this
endeavour. This was solely out of
fear of the alternative. It’s how
they felt safe. Or safer.
Meanwhile, I don’t look Jewish in
the first instance. I know because
when people discover I am, they
say, “You don’t look Jewish!” As
praise and a compliment. I’ve got
away with it, is the implication.
You’ve passed! Well done, my
friend! But the Nazis? They’d
work it out fast.
You could say, because it’s the
truth, that there is only one race
and that’s the human race. We
can’t even be divided into
“subspecies” because there is too
little genetic variation. But we
love to organise everything into
categories even if, with “race”,
we’re saying everything about
culture and nothing about
biology. It’s a
social
construct.
And, as such,
and no
matter the
“passing”
— a redherring — it’s as harmfully and
perniciously applicable to Jews as
anyone else.
Hitler — the fella who wrote
that book, Texas, if you want to
order it in — made his first
statement on “the Jewish
question” in 1919 and said, “The
Jews are unquestionably a race,
not a religious community.” And
then it’s, “Through inbreeding for
thousands of years, the Jew has
been able to preserve his race and
his racial characteristics much
more successfully than most of
the numerous people among
whom he lives. As a result we
have in the midst a non-German,
alien race unwilling and indeed
unable to shed its racial
characteristics.”
Jews, he concluded, “amount to
a racial-tuberculosis of the
nation”. Mein Kampf continues in
the same vein. Jews are a race not
a religion because “the Talmud is
not a book to prepare a man for
the hereafter, but only for a
profitable life in this world”.
Germans are “pure blood” and
Jews are “parasites”, and beware
“racial crossing” because that will
“lower the level of the higher
race”, and also beware the “dark-
haired Jewish youth” who “with
satanic joy on his face lurks in
wait for the unsuspecting girl
whom he defiles with his blood,
thus stealing her from her
people”. Hang on. Aren’t we all
into inbreeding? Anyway, it’s this
kind of thing over and over. He
didn’t half repeat himself. You
can see why there was never a
two-book deal.
So the Holocaust was about
race, to the extent anything is
about race. And if, as a concept, it
is ever the basis for hatred of
Jews, or the grounds for evil
perpetrated against Jews, then
that is racism. Inescapably.
This is not not about race.
Possibly, Whoopi isn’t an
antisemite. She’s maybe
just confused and hasn’t
bothered to educate herself.
Still, I shall probably never
watch Sister Act 2 again. But
that’s OK. It was never as
good as the first.Boris, King
William
and me
William in the exam,
say, and had revised
only King Henry, to
answer with: “King
William, yeah, yeah,
but King Henry, wow!
Let me tell you all
about him.” I am
reminded of this
whenever I see Boris
answering questions in
the Commons. “Parties,yeah, yeah, but the
vaccines, wow! World-
beating!” Or, “Birthday
cakes, yeah, yeah, but
the economy, wow!
That’s what the British
public want to hear
about, Mr Speaker!”
The difference, I
suppose, is that he does
know about what he’s
specifically being askedabout, but it’s the
principle of steering the
conversation to what
you want to talk about
that brought all this to
mind. I wonder if he
learnt it at school too.
He went to Eton. I went
to the local comp. But
the lesson’s the same.
He should ask for the
money back, no?Before my O-levels, our
history teacher told the
class that if we were
asked about KingDeborah Ross
I won’t be watching
Sister Act tonight,
Whoopi. Here’s why
J
ust as we had been informed,
men and women in hazmat
suits were there to greet us.
A small army of them, head
to toe in the full plastic and
goggles; you step off the
plane and there they are.
Welcome to Beijing.
There are medals to be cherished
here at this most extraordinary of
Winter Olympics, there will be
glory to be celebrated that for many
athletes will be like no other in their
professional lives. For me, though, a
journalist sent to cover the Games, the
highlight of the year has been getting
through Beijing airport without being
turned away. Achievements do not
come much greater.
They call it “Beijing” but, really, I
would hardly know. If there is a riot
in Tiananmen Square, or a protest
about the plight of the Uighurs, I
won’t be able to report it because I
can’t get there. I can’t so much as get
out to a local restaurant, let alone
visit the Forbidden City. I can’t see
anything bar the Olympic venues and
my hotel.
I would be fascinated to see what
Chinese lockdown looks like (no
parties here) in the Anzhenli district,
which is not far from my hotel, but
that’s just not possible. When you
arrive here for the Olympics, you
commit to the next two and a half
weeks in “the closed loop”, and if
you step outside it you will pretty
soon find yourself in a Covid
detention centre.
And yes, the authorities will know.
They will trace your phone. I have
been given a burner phone for this
trip; that’s a cybersecurity thing
apparently, though I can’t understand
why the authorities would want to
intercept my ice hockey reports. But
even my burner phone can be traced;
you break out of the closed loop and
your Games are over.That said, it remains unclear
whether or not you could break out if
you even wanted to. There has been
some extremely rigorous fencing
erected like a cordon around my hotel.
That is as much to stop anyone
breaking into the loop as out of it. And
hello, there are security guards to
enforce it too.
This, certainly, is an Olympic Games
like no other, and if you want to be
here there are rules to follow. A
rulebook has been online for you to
study (80-plus pages of it). I even
know the details required of the
facemasks that must be worn. No, you
can’t get away with those slack-elastic
mass-produced blue ones, indeed the
greatest hardship of this assignment is
not the restrictions of liberty but
whether these facemasks will return
you home with both ears in place.
This is how it rolls in a nation
attempting to pull off a zero-Covid
policy and simultaneously stage an
Olympic Games. Only China would
contemplate doing it this way; only
China could pull it off.
Attitudes here towards the handling
of Covid are diametrically opposed to
those in the UK. They sealed off
several residential communities last
week after a grand total of two Covid
positives were found; if there were
only two positives in a London
suburb we’d be out in the streets
hugging and kissing.
We would certainly be filling our
stadiums for fans to celebrate the
Games and bring them to life from the
stands; here, though, the stadiums will
be barely half full and those selected
to attend have received instructions
that they are welcome to clap the
athletes but, please, no shouting.
The locals have also been informed
that if, perchance, they were to witness
an Olympic vehicle in an accident,
they should not approach or do
anything as rash as rescue anythe times | Thursday February 3 2022 3times2
welcome to make use of one of the
“sleep rest units” provided.
On the other hand they can claim to
be staging the greenest Olympics here,
but who can test or trust the detail?
Trust does not exist, uncertainty
abounds. There is no getting away
from these Games, their hosts and the
environment shaped around political
containment and virus control.
This is all particularly sinister for the
athletes. All of us in this closed loop
are now being PCR-tested every day.
But can we trust the results? Some
athletes have already pointed out the
fact that it might be in China’s
interests to have some of their key
opposition “unfortunately” test
positive on the day of competition.
At the same time, though, it is
not in China’s interests to have a
spread of Covid. They are,
apparently, gold medallists at
beating the virus so they do not
want it ripping through their big
global PR event. Yesterday the
number of Olympic arrivals to have
tested positive had risen to 232.
So what our Chinese hosts really
need is for the sport to begin —
which it did last night. There is so
much curling that they had to start it
two days before the opening
ceremony. A crowd of about 200 were
allowed to attend. We don’t know how
much quarantining they had to do
before being allowed in. We do know
that they clapped and kept their voices
down. And when my facemask slipped
I was kindly reminded to nudge it up
above my nose.
At least, to explain it all, we have the
China Daily newspaper offering a
Winter Olympian pull-out where the
front page informs us “How President
Xi’s leadership is delivering ‘fantastic,
extraordinary and excellent’ Winter
Games”. Yes, thank you for that. We
shall see. Well, we shall see what we
are permitted to see.Above left: Jennifer
Dodds of Team GB
during a curling
practice. Above right,
from top: disinfecting
a railway station in
Zhangjiakou; a snow-
making machine.
Below: Owen Slotpassengers. That would be far too
great a Covid risk. It was very
uncharacteristically libertarian of the
Games’ organising committee when it
recently announced that while
athletes on the podium are actually
receiving their medals they can take
their facemasks off.
This whole journey commenced a
fortnight before departure. Fourteen
days out you had to be on a Beijing
2022 app website posting your daily
temperature. Then two PCR tests.
Then there was a blizzard of forms and
apps to complete and the requirement
for a QR code to appear on your
phone and then turn from yellow to
green. Your green QR code is like a
gold medal.
Then you are ready to meet Beijing
and the hazmat army. On Tuesday
morning when I arrived, it was
Chinese new year and many of them
greeted us with “Happy new year”
written in felt tip on their white
plastic suits. That was a nice touch; the
year of the tiger in the land of the
giant panda.
It was only when I got on my bus
from the airport that I finally saw a
Chinese person in civvies; this was our
bus driver, who was fully insulated
behind Perspex and had Google
Translate on his phone asking which
hotel we were going to.
Still the challenges arise. On hotel
check-in you are sent straight to your
room and not permitted to leave until
the PCR test you did at the airport has
declared you negative. However, if you
cannot get your emails, because the
Chinese firewall is preventing you
from doing so, then how are you to
know when your negative result has
come through? After three hours
waiting my good news finally came via
a phone call.
At that point you can set out into
the heart of the Olympics with that
satisfying crunch of snow underfoot.Except there is no crunch — because
there is no snow.
The average annual snowfall for
Beijing is 21cm. More concerning is
the lack of snowfall in the Olympic
mountain sites, which average about
20cm too. There have been a lot of
smiles, then, that some of that 20cm
came down in the past few days. Still,
the TV video montages with young
Chinese singers in team uniform
welcoming the world with, behind
them, snowy backdrops and pine trees
sagging under blankets of snow do
look rather like wishful thinking.
This is the first winter Olympics
planned to have 100 per cent
man-made show. More than 222
million litres of water have been
required for the job.
Environmentalists are equally
concerned with the fact that one
of the mountain ski competition
sites has been built from scratch
for the occasion and the
Songshan National Nature
Reserve has been ripped into to
allow this to happen.
The point is that they can do,
here, whatever they want. On
the one hand they are dragging
us into a strange futuristic
present. The big-air event for the
freestyle skiers and snowboarders is
being staged not in the mountains
but on a man-made run in the
capital next to what looks like a large
power station.
Meanwhile, behind the bar in the
main media centre, there are no bar
staff, but you can get a Screwdriver
mixed by a robot. There are also robot
options in the cafeteria, too, where
you can have your dinner delivered
from out of the ceiling above your
dining station. Until competition
really gets going, this has probably
been the most photographed event
at the Games. If it all gets too much,
here in the press centre, you areAttendees
have been
told to
clap the
athletes
— but,
please, no
shouting
COVER: REUTERS; AP; GETTY IMAGES. BELOW: AFP/GETTY IMAGES; APAnd in our next instalment of
Sharon Stone versus the world...
Ooh, I love these. Who’s she
taking on?Joe Rogan.
No idea who that is. A politician?A podcaster. A divisive podcaster,
mwahaha.
What makes him so Marmite?His views on Covid, this week. The
Joe Rogan Experience, hosted by
Spotify, gets an estimated 11 million
listeners a week. So when he made
brainy claims that coronavirus
vaccines can change your genes,
and that the antiparasitic drug
Ivermectin can cure the virus
(spoiler: this is misinformation),
a few people had opinions about
it. Including Stone.
Is this what all that Neil Young
hoo-ha was about?Yup. And Joni Mitchell pulled her
music from the platform after he
did. Several doctors have penned
an open letter to the streaming
company in complaint. And
Meghan and Harry shared an
opinion, obviously.
Obviously. Try and keep them away.Back to Stone. She has branded
Rogan and his opinions
“dangerous” and, more funnily, said
that “he should put a disclaimer
that he’s an asshole” and that “his
behaviour is affecting people’s lives
and deaths’’.
Blimey, don’t hold back, Shaz.Holding back is not her vibe.
So... is Spotify doing anything?I mean, free
speech etc.
And it has stuck
an advisory
warning on the
podcast, a move
praised by
the White
House. But
not all
celebs
think
Rogan is
wrong.
Dwayne
Johnson
has
defended
him,
for one.
Anyone
else?No one that
famous, to
be honest.
Oh well. Guess
I’ll stick to
Serial.
Hannah RogersThe lowdown
Sharon Stone