Meanwhile, in Paris . . .

Maybe it's because it's too early, but I haven't found much about the 2024 Paris Olympics to make fun of.  Except the opening ceremony, of course.  Whose bright idea was it to have the opening ceremony with the teams riding bots down the Seine in the pouring rain?  Even if had been sunny out, it still would have been awkward and cumbersome to pull off.   And in the city that gave us Catherine Deneuve and François Truffaut, the whole production - complete with a masked policewoman as the torch bearer - this was way to Hollywood!  Which reminds me, Los Angeles is hosting the Olympics in 2028, and if you think LA can do something similar on its river . . .  

. . . sorry to disappoint you.

And while we're at it, what the hell was Lady Gaga doing performing a cabaret number?  I mean, this is Paris, the home of many great chanteuses who carry on  rich tradition going back to Edith Piaf, and they get an American?  An American known for that Vegas-style theatricality that the French always sneer at?  I guess Joe Scarborough was right when he said we're the cultural envy of the world.  Given Gaga, and given that Snoop Dogg is on NBC's reporting team as a color commentator on the City of Light, apparently there was no one round to say, "Poor world!"

One non-American athlete that caught my attention is swimmer Siobhan Haughey, the grandniece of  an Irish prime minister.  She's competing for . . . Hong Kong.  (Her mother is Hong Kong Chinese.)  But why isn't she competing for Ireland?  I mean, Hong Kong is run by a repressive dictatorship, and when you consider her parents had the opportunity to flee, and . . . 

See what I mean when I say there's nothing really to make fun of?     

I was hoping to see some travelogue segments about France in between competitions, but NBC prefers to show celebrities in the stands, like Jessica Chastain, Tom Cruise, Ariana Grande, William "Flavor Flav" Drayton, and, of course, Lady Gaga.  Nice seats if you can get them.

Of course, there'll be the inevitable documentary about the fall of Paris to the German Wehrmacht in the spring of 1940, which brought Hitler to goose-step down the Champs Élysées . . . a scene that might very well be re-enacted on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington six months from now.