"Fun" or "No Fun"?

I've been having a bit of a joust with fellow bar-blogger Jim Boyce (well, our blogs really have very little in common: he's mostly ploddingly earnest, reporting openings, closures, and special events on the bar & restaurant scene with much thoroughness, whereas I..... well, I'm just amusing myself.....) over his recent post criticising the foreign media for a spate of stories about "The 'No Fun' Olympics".

I see where he's coming from. He feels these media stories have been exaggerating the impact of measures taken against certain bars and restaurants. He interprets that 'No Fun' banner as suggesting that it will be impossible to have any fun at the Olympics next month. He counters by pointing out that only a relatively small number of entertainment venues have had to close, and suggests that visitors are going to be far less bothered by that than us whingeing resident expats. He also reminds us how many other wonderful things there are to do in Beijing. And he ventures that there are "legitimate security concerns" behind some of the venue closures. So, yeah, pretty much the full Xinhua propaganda package.

His take on the 'No Fun' headline is bollocks - this slogan doesn't suggest that all fun will be impossible, it simply highlights the fact that the government here is taking steps to try to stop people (especially Westerners) having fun.

His representation of the range of 'anti-fun' measures goes to the opposite extreme from the media stories he complains of, and he is guilty of some radical understatement and inaccuracy.

That "legitimate security concerns" line is, I think, arrant nonsense. (One of the things that disturbs me most about some of these measures being taken is that it suggests that the authorities here haven't got a clue about how to ensure real security during the Games, and are just running around madly trying to look busy.)

Worst of all, I am irritated by his complete failure to consider the political motivations underlying these measures. I'm afraid I just found this post glib and facetious - and I told him so. It was also (though probably inadvertently) a riot of arse-kissing Communist Party propaganda.

To my mind, this is not a story to be made light of. (And quite probably, much of the media coverage which Boyce was mocking has itself been far too glib and facetious about this.) If even one bar or restaurant or concert gets closed down supposedly on the grounds of Olympic security concerns, it is too many.

In fact, I think we're well above a dozen now, and it may rise further. Of course, yes, it is just a drop in the ocean of Beijing's diverse nightlife scene - but it's the principle of the thing. It is appalling that this kind of thing is happening. And it would, I'm quite sure, be far worse, if the IOC weren't exercising some restraining influence.

And it really has nothing to do with security. I favour the slogan 'The Mafan Olympics'.