The organizers of the 2024 Paris Olympics have finally issued an apology... well, more like a statement.
Paris 2024 kicked off with some immediate controversy after a part of the Opening Ceremony designed to showcase the fashion of scene of Paris took the opportunity to mock Christians around the world with a drag queen Last Supper reenactment... complete with some dude's nutsack hanging out of his shorts and a Smurf-looking Dionysus with barely clothes on.
I'd share the full video, but it's been scrapped from NBC's YouTube page, and most of X as well:
https://twitter.com/piersmorgan/status/1817189903521976503
The stunt resulted in an immediate backlash from Christians around the world, and even some folks who aren't Christians, but still found it troubling.
The tasteless performance has been condemned by the Catholic Church, Italy's deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini, French bishops, and even French politicians, among others.
In a press conference today, Paris 2024 spokesperson Anne Descamps essentially said that the Opening Ceremony didn't intend to offend anybody:
"Clearly there was never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group. (The opening ceremony) tried to celebrate community tolerance. We believe this ambition was achieved. If people have taken any offense we are really sorry."
Paris 2024 president Tony Estanguet added:
“We imagined a ceremony to show our values and our principles so we gave a very committed message. The idea was to really trigger a reflection. We wanted to have a message as strong as possible.Naturally we had to take into account the international community. Having said that - it is a French ceremony for the French games - so we trusted our artistic director. We have freedom of expression in France and we wanted to protect it.”
So basically... "we're French, tough luck." Did I paraphrase that correctly?
And finally, Thomas Jolly, the artistic director who crafted the controversial opening ceremony, also commented on the backlash. He said they intended to celebrate different gender identities with a Greek-pagan party:
"The idea was to do a big pagan party linked to the gods of Olympus. You'll never find in my work any desire to mock or denigrate anyone. I wanted a ceremony that brings people together, that reconciles, but also a ceremony that affirms our Republican values of liberty, equality and fraternity."
He also said:
"Our idea was inclusion. Naturally when we want to include everyone and not exclude anyone questions are raised. Our subject was not to be subversive. We never wanted to be subversive.We wanted to talk about diversity. Diversity means being together. We wanted to include everybody. In France, we have artistic freedom. We are lucky in France to live in a free country."
Not exactly an apology, eh?
Diversity at the expense of the 2 billion Christians in the world? And it's not like they were "excluded," they were openly mocked. Their God blasphemed in front of the entire world. And again... we all know they would NEVER mock Islam like this, or any other religion.
Do not be deceived, it's all very intentional... and they're not even apologizing for it.
https://twitter.com/BretWeinstein/status/1817362069647425953
