These Aren’t Ideal Times to Hype Olympic Ideal

Gentlemen, start your luges!

As evident from the drab-uniformed Americans and other global jocks tramping through austere Minami Nagano Sports Park on Friday night, it’s that time again.

Time for the Zenkoji Temple’s bonging bell, the ceremonial raising of sacred pillars, pot-bellied sumo wrestlers throwing their weight around, singing snow children and another opening-rite telecast on CBS, which aims to translate its 2 1/2-week ode to sponsors into Olympian profits.

Time, also, for another February flame commemorating 17 days of planetary camaraderie that is vastly more symbolic than real.

Proof of that came when Winter Games organizers this week urged the U.S. to delay clobbering Iraq until after the last skier completes the 16.5-kilometer cross-country course Feb. 22 and Olympians return that evening to say their televised goodbyes. And when the scary “WW” words, World War, were uttered in a recent warning to the U.S. by Baghdad-friendly Russian leader Boris Yeltsin.

Nonetheless, four years after Lillehammer, Norway, come the sledders, triple lutzers and biathletes of Nagano, Japan. To say nothing of the curlers competing in the latest sport, along with snowboarding and women’s ice hockey, to be officially welcomed to the Winter Olympics family.

Curling, you say? As in hairdressers, start your hot irons? Not quite, for competing curling teams, called rinks, guide polished stones down sheets of ice. Then there are the sweepers and . . .

Well, you’ll see for yourselves if you happen to hit CBS at the right time during its 128 hours of taped Nagano coverage in prime time, late night and weekends that it hopes will proceed without any interruption that isn’t a scheduled break or commercial.

It may get dicey. CBS has more to fear than the prospect of a U.S. military strike on Iraq when it comes to the potential of outside events penetrating Nagano’s hermetically sealed biosphere and messing up its telecasts. It turns out, you see, that the Lillehammer and Nagano games have more in common than super-giant slaloms, double salchows and athletes with seven-syllable names. Just as Lillehammer featured Tonyawatch--the media’s obsession then with the psychodrama of Nancy Kerrigan vs. Tonya Harding--the Nagano games are opening at the height of Monicawatch--the unsightliness of Monica Lewinsky writhing under a media microscope like a lab specimen. Clearly, the biggest news is occurring outside Nagano.

Should something big break in the Lewinsky story vis a vis President Clinton and independent counsel Kenneth Starr, that would severely test CBS priorities, possibly forcing it to choose, at least temporarily, between the games of Nagano and gamesmanship of Washington. Its priorities in 1994 were questionable at times, especially when it barely paused in its Lillehammer coverage to report an American couple being charged with selling U.S. secrets to Russia and the former Soviet Union. Can’t bother with stories that don’t live up to the Olympics spirit.

The Nagano opening ceremony was, well, unspectacular, uninspired, even tedious, creating an aura as overcast as the skies. The Americans looked like the Blues Brothers, and appeared about as dour. CBS tried a live interview with gold-medal figure skating hopeful Tara Lipinski as she entered the stadium with the U.S. contingent. It fizzled badly. It was easy to lose interest.

If nothing else, though, the convergences of nationalities and cultures at Olympics are rare occasions when U.S. television is forced to acknowledge that this nation is not largely a universe onto its self. “I don’t care whether they sing la-la-la or wa-wa-wa,” Seji Ozawa, musical director for the Nagano ceremony, told someone on CBS on Friday night regarding the multinational rendition of “Ode to Joy” that was the highlight of the evening. “I just want them to sing.”

How proficient will CBS and its refreshingly minimalist co-anchors Jim Nantz and Andrea Joyce be at beaming the Nagano Games to the U.S. during this ratings sweeps month?

Well, the good news is that John Tesh works for NBC. The bad is that some of CBS’ Lillehammer coverage--particularly its heavy ratio of commercials to actual competition--was savagely criticized, with justification. And naturally, there’s always the tendency of those telecasting either Winter or Summer Olympics to at once smear on the jingoism and romanticize these get-togethers as pantheons of goodness, tolerance and world peace.

Of course, that’s what they said in 1984 about Sarajevo.