If This Is Nagano, Let the Blames Begin

Your staff people in Nagano are very lucky. They could enjoy the opening ceremony without the constant chattering of Jim Nantz throughout the “Ode to Joy.”

Does CBS think that sports fans are too dumb or uneducated to enjoy Beethoven? I hope someone from CBS reads this so they can tell Nantz and company to shut up during the closing ceremony.

AUDREY B. FOLEY

Claremont

*

It may have been “An Opening With Appeal,” as the headline stated, but not on CBS, which botched the opening royally, just as it has the rest of the Olympics. Viewers couldn’t see the ceremony, especially the finale, because of boring interviews by dull reporters and even duller travelogues, a problem that has plagued CBS broadcasts throughout.

After NBC and ABC’s mediocre jobs, it seemed that it had to get better, but CBS is making its best effort to outdo the other networks and really discourage everyone from watching. The only thing better than watching the Olympics on CBS is not to watch at all.

JACK ALLEN

Pacific Palisades

*

The German text for “Joy, lovely divine spark” is “Freude, schoene Goetterfunken.” The word for spark also refers to the broadcast of sound, but in this case the Funken by CBS was far from divine. Its insertion of an interview with Michelle Kwan and countless commercials during the short duration of this movement was tasteless and could hardly have been received with joy by anyone.

MAX RIEDLSPERGER

San Luis Obispo

*

I have never been so awed by the beauty and elegance at the opening ceremony. In one clean sweep, the Nagano designers made a statement against all gaudiness, crassness, ugliness and excessiveness we saw at opening ceremonies the last 14 years.

How surprised and disappointed I was when I read that one of your writers used words like dull, unspectacular, uninspired, tedious, dour, etc. With all due respect to the difference of opinion, I hope the Nagano ceremony will serve as an inspiration for all openings to come.

TED WU

Los Angeles

*

If CBS isn’t going to start its Olympic coverage until the precious prime-time hours, why not give different live coverage to each time zone instead of dropping in a tape recycled from the East Coast? It would certainly boost their ratings to run a program that isn’t a glorified rerun.

If they were awarding medals for Olympic coverage, CBS would not even be in the running and it is the only prime-time participant.

JOHN MESSITT

Los Angeles

*

Endless commercials. Inane chatter. Weak reporting. Skating practices. Marathon monks. Finally, some real competition at 11 p.m. CBS’s coverage of the Olympics is setting world records in audience frustration.

BILL WEBER

La Canada

*

Here we are in the Winter Olympics again, and CBS is bungling the coverage once more. They continue to think that viewers are more interested in watching all these short stories about some of the athletes and how they got there, rather than actually watching the events.

TOM BUTLER

Azusa

*

Not four steps in the opening pairs competition were taken before some “color” commentator started talking. While the lucky ones in the arena watched and listened, we unfortunate TV viewers had to put up with the voice-over.

It’s inconceivable that we are watching artistry based on music, and are not allowed to become one with the skater(s) without some cursed voice telling us things we either already know or couldn’t care less about.

Imagine an opera or ballet with the same intrusion.

DON COULSON

Temecula

*

CBS has invented the five-minute Olympics. Five minutes of competition, followed by five minutes of commercials, followed by five minutes of talking heads. Repeat as necessary.

No thanks.

WILLIAM J. WARREN

Pasadena

*

While urine testing for any reason is an obnoxious invasion of privacy, there is probably some reasonable basis to check the urine of Olympic medalists for the presence of performance-enhancing drugs.

However, to include pot in that survey hardly seems fair, given marijuana’s reputation for dulling youthful reflexes and stealing juvenile motivation.

Hardly a week goes by that the guardians of public morality don’t lecture us on the evils of pot.

The good news is that it was a close vote [and later overturned]. However, one wonders why they were checking for recreational drugs in the first place. Are they ex-officio members of the American Drug Enforcement Administration, or do they have an international mandate to do law enforcement dirty work?

THOMAS J. O’CONNELL

San Mateo

*

Good heavens! An Olympic snowboarder tests positive for the demon weed, marijuana. We cannot tolerate athletes taking a drug that gives its users such super-human strength. Ever seen “Reefer Madness”?

ANDREW N. DUPUY

Providence, R.I.

*

The accomplished and distinguished Hawaiian American sumo wrestler Akebono should be given an honorary Sumo-Cum-Laude.

M.A. GLUECK

Newport Beach

*

Your man in Nagano, Mike Downey, devoted an entire column to the remembrances of an 85-year-old gold-medal swimmer from Japan, recalling the 1932 Olympics here in Los Angeles. He put the Olympic village in Beverly Hills, when it fact it was in Baldwin Hills.

SANFORD KLESMER

Beverly Hills