My God, the Olympics … something the hell is happening; outside there’s fireworks or mad bombing, and it’s on the TV screen too, so ahhhh, it must be the Olympics closing ceremony … after two weeks of an opening ceremony of which approval is compulsory, and a series of sporting events in which pure quantitative improvement was the prize, we have come to the end of it.

The closing ceremony was advertised as being more of a party than the opening ceremony, that melange-chaos of Britishness, designed to show up both the fascistic order of the Beijing ceremony, and the criminal irony of the Sydney Olympics. It succeeded. It was a piece of weird-ass shit, with half a dozen different authors, intended to express an idea of freedom.

That by claiming authorship of the industrial revolution, we would not also say that this was a universally good thing for humanity.

But that circumspect view of the dark satanic mills arising from the ground, was tempered by a myth of transcendence — accomplished by the sudden sight of Tim Berners-Lee sitting at a table, tapping on a computer presumably inventing the world wide web.

So it was a thoroughly acceptable ideological event — the fall of industrialism was succeeded by the liberation of intellectual labour. Who would be there to gainsay that, to suggest that a world where people sit in front of a screen doing stuff — if they’re lucky — was not a liberation but an extension of industrialism?

Certainly not, aw shucks, Danny Boyle, whose artistic creations rely on hundreds of people sitting in front of screens crunching shit out, and being shiveringly grateful for the role they get to play in the “new economy”.

So the weird thing is … the 2012 UK Olympics are more ideological than the 2008 Beijing Games. At least then, we knew the state was directing it — and a dead version of state power at that, very archaic. The Boyle version was another thing altogether.

The opening ceremony was an entertaining non-event, the actual Games was an athletics competition, the closing ceremony was an instalment on a non-event. Nothing happened of the slightest importance. Yet demands for copy came from every quarter of a dying media, from terrified section editors, too scared to go with their instinct that IT MEANT NOTHING.

Trained in postgrad journalism courses — where failed journalists leach the last vestige of life out of actual, potential writers — they demand Olympic updates, because they know nothing other, have nothing in their lives but a mortgage and fear.

Look, the opposite is also objectionable. The Olympics were fun, or people thought they were. It was great to watch someone run one tenth of a second faster than other people, and then worship this body-freak like he was some form of salvation — even though it was impossible to tell, until you were told, who had won.

But yeah, it was fun — and the saddos who tried to round up an anti-Olympics squad in the East End were more off-beam than ever.

The opening ceremony provided one font for discussions of Britishness — the closing ceremony provided another. It had an initial compulsion, with a parody of street parties dancing along to songs I’ve already forgotten but rather enjoyed. Then I think there were the supermodels paraded around on trucks. Then the Kaiser Chiefs, who had two hits five years ago, performing a coupla Who hits.

The high point — apart from the Spice Girls reunion — was Eric Idle performing Bright Side of Life with an enormous cast of extras. No other Pythons, just Eric. The others were probably asked and refused out of dignity. Or not. But it was Eric, every half-talented chancer’s model for success, who made the grade.

After that … Queen, the handover, videos, I dunno who gives a shit? The Brazilians were naff, I don’t think they’re up to it. They should have had n-ked hotties of both genders up there, miming s-x, just showing the Brits there was something else but quirkiness.

But no, the Brazil thing was like a farkin’ cultural crossover dance, c.1955.

Ah well …

It is over now … can we get back to something that is not an athletics comp.

Did it sell more papers? More online subs to websites? No one cares, because the vast bulk of media workers have no concern for the actual health of their own media. Bored shitless by the Olympics, they will nevertheless transfer it without complaint. And that is why mainstream media is dying …

But hey, there was a John Lennon clip …