“Somehow the Bud Light ad in which a man is shot from a cannon into an elephant’s anus seems a model of tasteful cleverness by comparison”: NBC’s Summer Games Coverage “… is so packaged and overproduced as well as after-the-fact that by the time it reaches American TV screens it seems remote in the worst sense of the word. The hours and hours of features and profiles NBC has produced about participating athletes include footage from previous Olympic Games, and this blurs right into the new material, all of it becoming a seamless and wearying smear. Everything new looks old again.” Critic Tom Shales is one of my favorite curmudgeons, and I usually agree with him, as I do here. He’s got several other important complaints about the NBC coverage as well. Read on. My biggest objection is that, to judge from the NBC coverage I’ve watched, it would appear that only six or eight nations are competing. Weren’t the Olympics supposed to be about more than the superpowers? Washington Post