Broadcast in Red, White and Blue

You’ll get the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and chorales of emotion in the TV booth, when the U.S. flag found in the rubble and ash of ground zero is hoisted for the cameras, as it was for the World Series and Super Bowl.

Very nice.

With the NBC-televised Winter Olympics beginning in Salt Lake City tonight, though, here’s another thought for the opening ceremony. Strap former Enron Corp. Chairman Ken Lay to a luge and send him on his way.

Better yet, have him be the luge.

That would give the Winter Games a spritz of reality beyond tonight’s scheduled performances by LeAnn Rimes, the Dixie Chicks, Yo-Yo Ma and other musical stars, an element that NBC’s high-adrenalin sports mongers could really embrace.

Speaking of the luge--which we’re told every four years is something we adore--no backslider on this side of the Atlantic has won a medal since the sport was introduced as an Olympic event in 1964. When the two-day men’s singles event begins Sunday, Germany’s Georg Hackl will be trying to become the only competitor to win four consecutive Olympic luge titles.

“How can you bet against him?” American luger Tony Benshoof has been quoted as saying. “Hackl has the unique ability to rise to any occasion.”

Of course, rising for any reason, while traveling near 90 mph on your back, can be hazardous. Not that it would make any difference.

Benshoof will beat the favored Hackl and earn the gold medal.

That’s because God, whose favorite colors we all know are red, white and blue, has been deluged with post-Sept. 11 pleas to bless America. This message is being sent via mass-produced “God Bless America” signs and banners that have surfaced among the multitudes.

As if God had to be asked. As if we weren’t always God’s favorites. As if God, at this very moment, weren’t chanting, “USA, USA, USA”

Among the beneficiaries of this God-inclusive patriotism are America’s Olympic athletes, who would naturally be covered by any blanket blessing from above, because God is surely as much a sports fanatic as the Old Glories from NBC who will be covering these Winter Games with their famous jingoistic zeal.

And as bullish about America too, from the mountains, to the prairies, to the ocean white with foam.

If everyone gets blessed, the result is a tie. Which means, of course, that God will play favorites in Salt Lake City by blessing America but not the athletes of the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, Switzerland, Austria or any other nation, including Germany.

So, so long Hackl.

Unless, of course, God has found the luge as inexplicable and uninteresting as we who would rather watch even curling than people in bodysuits zoom down a track on their backs while NBC’s hysterical announcers inform viewers how exciting it is.

In which case, God would have the option of excluding America’s lugers from the blessing and granting a divine glow exclusively to our deserving figure skaters, Alpine skiers, ice dancers and whomever.

Now you may be thinking that God, who has had an emotional week in athletics after blessing the New England Patriots in that squeaker of a Super Bowl just last Sunday, may be taking the 2002 Winter Olympics off, leaving the United States in the lurch. If true, bummer. Yet even so, U.S. athletes would still be getting help from high places.

Even if God doesn’t bless Team USA in Salt Lake City, be assured that NBC and its stations will.

As they have U.S. athletes when previously telecasting Olympics (and as ABC did before them), all but digitally erasing teams from other nations, as if they did not exist.

You’ll see some of this 2002 crowd during tonight’s opening ceremony, but afterward even the best of the foreign athletes mostly will vanish faster than you can say Yo-Yo, unless they earn their way back on NBC by doing something spectacular.

Like applying for U.S. citizenship.

Although some call it xenophobic, other countries, including our good friends the Brits, also bask in their own Olympians, as their own chauvinistic TV and newspaper coverage affirms.

This is shrewd policy for NBC, moreover. No sense stirring up the natives. Should the network and its stations begin dwelling on athletes from other nations, viewers would become confused and wonder why some of these with odd-sounding names such as Finland (Is that near Fiji?) never get air time on newscasts. What’s going on here? Do these other lands hibernate between Olympics?

I mean, China we’ve heard of, because of chow mein and everything, and Afghanistan and Pakistan too, in the aftermath of Sept. 11. But who knew there were creatures on Earth called Latvians? Or that there was such a place as Slovakia? I mean, if it were worth a peek, wouldn’t it be in Vegas with Wayne Newton and the Eiffel Tower?

In other words, as TV coverage of all Olympic venues becomes increasingly myopic and isolationist--even as Americans are warned of terrorist dangers lurking everywhere globally--God bless ignorance.

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Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be reached at howard.rosenberg@latimes.com.