Sporting Spirits

In keeping with the Christian tradition of prizing ignorance and simple-mindedness over knowledge and sophistication, a gaggle of god-botherers has erupted in noisy indignation over a tableau vivant at the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics. French bishops, who ought to know better and probably do, and American rightists, who never know better when there is squealing to be done, condemned the tableau as a mockery of the True Faith while, as usual, neither rejoicing nor being exceeding glad at another chance to equal the prophets persecuted before them. Participants in the tableau included drag queens, a transgender model and an undraped singer, and the scene was denounced as a blasphemous parody of the Last Supper; while in fact it was based on a painting of a feast of the Greek gods, for all the world as if Olympic values had more to do with clean-limbed physical pagans than with flea-ridden flesh-mortifying Christians. Nevertheless, the organising committee has apologised for the offence caused, and it remains as yet unclear whether anyone has pointed out to the defenders of the Last Supper that little party's indisputable status as a cannibalistic parody of the feast of Passover.