NBC and Tom Brokaw’s Olympic Tribute to the Battle of Britain
Thank you, NBC and Tom Brokaw. The 2012 Olympics are history, and near the end you provided an important amendment to the opening ceremonies. But questions remain. Did you long ago plan to devote half an hour of prime time to the Battle of Britain or did you scurry around for the footage and the interviews after sitting through the pageantry and politics of that first night? No matter the answer, you did the right thing.
There we were last Saturday evening, settling in for one last round of Olympic competition and what did NBC give us but a history lesson — and one that had nothing to do with Olympics past, not even the historic 1936 Berlin Games of Jesse Owens fame or the previous London Games of 1948. Well then, how about the games of 1940 and 1944? Oops, no games were held in either Olympic year. It seems as though something else of some importance was going on at the time. And that something else would certainly have eliminated London as the host city, unless dodging Hitler’s bombs would have suddenly qualified as an Olympic event.
So thanks, NBC and Mr. Brokaw. You reminded us that life — and death — sometimes do get in the way of fun and games. Had you not taken a good chunk of time away from this year’s Olympic fun and games we might have been left thinking that those opening night organizers were right. We might have walked away from it all thinking that the greatest accomplishments of the English people over the course of the last century really were their contributions to children’s literature and the creation of their National Health Service.
Now, who wants to downplay what any number of great English authors have given to the children — and adults — of the world? I certainly don’t. But the National Health Service? Of course, the organizers went to Olympian efforts to portray the employees of the NHS positively. Sweet-faced nurses were everywhere in sight, tending tenderly to their patients. A few even had time to read bed time stories to children, thereby combining in one touching scene what those same organizers decided were England’s two great contributions to modern life.
Were those same Olympic organizers also going for a three-fer in one fell swoop? Were they trying to stick it to the Yanks, too? No doubt. The United States is in the midst of a national election and a great uproar over something called ObamaCare. And what are the Brits doing but telling us to calm down, look at us, and accept progress.
Of course, that same opening night extravaganza could have been portrayed a little differently. Instead of efficient nurses kindly performing their duties, the massive tableau could have featured long lines and longer waiting lists, blizzards of paper work, rejectees for hip replacements and the like. But that wouldn’t have played quite as well. Nor would it have been consistent with sticking it to the country that is paying most of the freight for NBC to cover these games and the country that hasn’t been all that anxious to adopt a national health care system.
Dear oh dear. Wasn’t music and the www the most important thing in the ceremony. You shouldn’t feel so jealous of our sceptered isle, you have a big country try to embrace it. The whole article seems a jealous whinge. Very embarrassed reading it
Your embarrassment is not a concern here, ‘old chap’.
In this country your Nation is lionized for this accomplishment and rightly so.
It’s not jealousy in any form, but simple admiration and respect.
Try it for a while, it’ll grow on ya’.
But yet, your seeming primary notion is ‘your embarrassment’.
Don’t think too highly of ‘ourselves’, do we?
A Dee Bag in any language, or culture, is still just a Dee Bag.
That’d be you…
There are many places in this essay where “England” is used when “Britain” should be. There were many Scotsmen who fought against Nazi Germany. Some of them even flew in the Battle of Britain.
Mr. Chalberg might need this: http://i.minus.com/jemv3g.gif
I know I do!
I noticed that too. I am sure there were more than one Welshman involved also.
Also Free French, Free Poles (the Polish RAF squadron were insanely brave), etc., and the Empire: Canada, Australia, India, South Africa, New Zealand, Jamaica, and on and on. And yes, ‘England’ for ‘Britain’ annoys us immensely – English people as well as those from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Had to watch the Battle segment in the bedroom because my daughter pitched a fit about the events being delayed so we could see those clips of the last fighting Brit. My Idol Sir Winston.
There was more history in that one hour on NBC than there was all of last week on the so-called “History” Channel
I like to call it “The End-of-History” Channel.
I LOVED that hour of the Olympics. I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Tom Brokaw, not shilling for evil for once. Who knew?
All the wife could say was “this is so depressing”. Well hun, time to snap out of your reality TV stupor and wake the flock up.
Evil is reality and is Hell.
Brokaw not shilling for evil for a change…right on! I’ll never forget his words the night of the Bush/Gore election when he said how great it was that we lived in a country where there were no tanks in the street after an election. Of course we know that would have been his preference since his guy didn’t win. He’s a despicable socialist hack and I can’t even stand the sound of his voice. For some reason he has a soft spot for the veterans of WWII and speaks of them as the greatest generation but sees no hypocrisy between that and his support of a socialist ideology that is the opposite of what we were fighting for.
We finally turned away in frustration. When we turn in to watch Olympics, we expect to watch …well, we expect to watch Olympics. Bait and switch? not sure. But if we had wanted to watch the History channel, well, we would have turned to the history channel. Furthermore, there was no advanced notice given that we were going to be subjected to an hour of war film footage.
I love, LOVE history. I have relatives who died as pilots fighting in the Battle of Britain. But I did not want to process that topic at that time. Bad Faith Advertising, or something. But we were not happy or impressed. we finally came back at 9:00. Sorry. God Bless the Brits!!
I’d have mentioned Great Britain’s peaceful (mostly) relinquishment of empire in a manner that left the former subject nations the ability to function on their own as a praiseworthy achievement. Wasn’t like having to push back the moslems or Ottomans, or the exhausted bankruptcy of the spanish caudillos.
I went looking for Brokaw’s special as it seemed to be advertised as a stand alone program. Couldn’t find it and gave it up as a bad deal, only to stumble across it during the Olympic broadcast.
Chuck, I generally dislike NBC, and I join you in the sentiment that NBC had done a fine thing in showing us a critical point in London’s storied history as part of it’s Olympic coverage. But if you’re going to praise something, praise it, don’t throw out a bunch or niggling little nitpicks tangential to your idea, and contrary to your main point.
Among my many thoughts as I watched, I hoped Obama was watching, and I wondered if he is capable of being moved by the words of Winston Churchill, or if he’d ever appreciate how a real leader leads during a crisis, or if he’d ever regret his petulance in ridding the White House of the loaned bust of this great man. Churchill: …if the British Empire lasts a thousand years, men will still say “this was their finest hour.” Obama: “You didn’t build that.”
I was thinking the exact same thing, and hoping that others were as well. The return of the Churchill bust was an outrage. I’m glad that fact was brought up just before the Olympics was televised to make it fresh in the minds of anyone “on the fence” of who to vote for in November, that Obama is a low class, Muslim communist. I was happy to see the White House deny they sent it back then they had to admit that they did. This president lies like no one I have ever seen. He is utterly despicable.
Alas, I did not see the NBC coverage with Tom Brokaw which talked about the Battle of Britain. Great Britain was very brave, and lucky to have had Winston Churchill as the Prime Minister. (President Obama’s political priorities were exposed when he returned the bust of Winston Churchill to Great Britain and bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia.)
Question: Did any of the major networks notice that the non-state of “Palestine” paraded at the Olympic opening ceremonies as a nation?” This is the group, of the “Palestine Liberation Organization” (P.L.O.), invented by Gamal Nasser, ruler of Egypt, and the Soviet Union in Cairo in 1964, which murdered the Israeli athletes in the Olympic games in Munich in 1972. But the Olympic organizers did not allow a moment of silence in honor of those athletes but instead honored the group that murdered them. The attack of the “P.L.O.” got Arabs to be called “Palestinian.” (“Palestinians,” had always meant “Jew” from the time the Roman Emperor Hadrian in 135 A.D. changed the name of Judea to “Palestina,” and “Palestine” had always meant “the land of the Jews.” That is why Great Britain after World War I got the “Palestine Mandate” to be the “homeland of the Jews.”)
England wasn’t alone in 1939 and during the Battle of Britain on 1940.
Canada was there, standing inthenfight against Hitler. The USA might have been asleep at the switch.
Canada was not.
So were the Aussies, New Zealanders, South Africans, Free French, Polish exiles and others, including a small number of Americans (e.g. Eagle Squadrons).
America wasn’t asleep at the switch. There was deep distrust and anger at the Europeans from WWI and its aftermath. They didn’t want to get dragged into yet another European war. Isolationism was rampant. When FDR introduced the first peacetime (at least for us) draft in US history, it was deeply unpopular. When it came up for renewal in 1941, it only passed by a single vote margin. At the time, the US military was ranked below Finland. As much as I dislike so many of the social welfare programs FDR enacted, I approve of the actions he took to get America on the path to wartime readiness such as building up the military, Lend-Lease, escorting British ships (a violation of neutrality) and the like.
Fred,
Go read the names on the headstones of the 18 American Eagle Squadron pilots buried and Brookwood Cemetery. America might not have entered the war as a combatant nation at the time of the Battle of Britain, but don’t denigrate the sacrifice of those brave Americans who died to defend Britain prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor. We won’t even start on the topic of America’s total contribution to the war effort compared to Canada’s as I greatly admire and respect the contribution and sacrifices made by Canada and her forces, and would never consider backhanding a great ally.
It’s important to consider not only the total contribution of the US and Canada but the relative contribution. Canada has a much smaller population than the US, approximately 1/10th IIRC. I’ve read that 1 Canadian man out of every 6 alive at the time was in the military. While not sure, I think the US participation rate was approximately the same. At the end of the war, Canada had the world’s 3rd largest Navy. Coming from a nation with about 1/10th the population of the US, that represents a huge contribution.
Shocked and pleasantly surprised with the history lesson instead of the 900th hour of Olympic coverage. Felt like this was a shot across the White House bow by the mysterious *they*. You know, *they*? The ones, that get to make all the mysterious decisions. That *they*.
Glad to hear about this effort by NBC. Just as we should blast the networks when they show brazen liberal partisanship, we should praise the networks when they do well.
Didn’t NBC edit out the tribute to 7/7 which also included all lives lost in warfare.
So, why is NBC recognizing events years ago but ignore’s our losses in recent times.Showing a Ryan Seacrest/Michael Phelps interview in stead.
The tube bombings happened the day after we found out we’d won the bid for the games. We never got a chance to celebrate getting the games here before tragedy hit. Honouring the people who died that day was always going to be an important issue and it will always be linked to the Olympic’s
About the N.H.S, there is no movement here to implant it in the U.S.
The N.H.S has nothing to do with the U.S but the attacks keep coming,i am not interested in debating ‘who has got the best health system ‘
It is obvious that it is up to Americans to decide what you want.
However, there seems to be real hatred in the U.S for our system which is widely supported in the U.K
When the N.H.S was noted in the open ceremony you must of all missed the point.
It was recognizing Great Ormond St Children’s hospital which is near by.
The hospital’s clinical teams see many children with rare conditions from all over the UK and overseas, across a wide range of clinical specialties .
The doctors and nurses and some of the children were from GOSH.
It was linked to children’s literacy because JM Barrie gave all the rights to Peter Pan to Great Ormond Street Hospital in 1929, and this was later confirmed when he died in 1937.
JK Rowling read Peter Pan out
So why the hatred here for the NHS? It was celebrating a children’s hospital rather then the NHS as a whole.
I am not exaggerating when i say that the Olympics has been a huge success for the people here and our athletes.
“Instead of efficient nurses kindly performing their duties, the massive tableau could have featured long lines and longer waiting lists, blizzards of paper work, rejectees for hip replacements and the like.”
How about young men calling the police from their hospital bed because they are dying of thirst and nobody will listen? How about the police checking up on him, being told everything is fine and leaving only for him to die of thirst while under the “care” of those “efficient” nurses?
The people of Britain wish the NHS only suffered from excessive bureaucracy, the reality is that the NHS is quite literally killing people.
Yeah, I tuned in to watch the Olympics and got the History Channel instead for an hour.
Given the 100 or so hours devoted to beach volleyball, that most classic of ancient Greek sports, an hour to honor the Bruts fir their finest hour seems to be reasonable.
Wonderful picture of Winston Churchill….let’s all remember that he had an American mother, the heiress Jennie Jerome.
Thought I had the wrong channel and kept checking-was shocked and thrilled and watched the whole thing! I was so pleasantly surprised that a msm channel extolled Churchill and real values.