{"id":133,"date":"2008-08-26T06:37:41","date_gmt":"2008-08-26T13:37:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/xsml\/archives\/133"},"modified":"2008-08-26T06:37:41","modified_gmt":"2008-08-26T13:37:41","slug":"television-and-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/2008\/08\/26\/television-and-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"television and politics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>a few weeks ago i wondered if the Olympics would be the environmentalist blockbuster of the summer. <\/p>\n<p>a blockbuster? without a doubt. environmentalist? sorta. last Friday on Korean television i caught sight of not just fake trees around the Olympic stadium but even faked high-rises.* the buildings were real enough but the authorities had set up lights inside each vacant room to simulate occupancy. <\/p>\n<p>over the weekend i watched a few minutes of the marathon with my brother-in-law. as the helicopter followed the front of the pack into a lush urban park he remarked &#8220;it looks really nice, so much for the pollution.&#8221; never mind that the route and its coverage were planned to create just such a reaction.<\/p>\n<p>to this day we don&#8217;t know whether or not <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Grigori_Aleksandrovich_Potemkin\">Potemkin<\/a> really did create similar fakes to impress his queen. <\/p>\n<p>but for whom did China put on such a show if not, ultimately, for the Chinese? and by show I don&#8217;t mean the fireworks that were pre-taped or any of the other televisual spectacles. I mean our reactions \u2013 the world&#8217;s reactions \u2013 carefully filtered back into China&#8217;s national discourse. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Loss_of_face\">Prestige<\/a> is a complicated thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>a few weeks ago i wondered if the Olympics would be the environmentalist blockbuster of the summer. a blockbuster? without a doubt. environmentalist? sorta. last Friday on Korean television i caught sight of not just fake trees around the Olympic stadium but even faked high-rises.* the buildings were real enough but the authorities had set&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}