Slavic Love at the Opening Ceremonies

I adore the Parade of Nations in the Olympics opening ceremony because it allows me to geek out about two of my favorite things: geopolitics and fashion.

For instance, I'm still wondering if it was intentional, or just a happy accident, that the Czech and Slovak teams both had heart motifs on their opening ceremony uniforms:

 The Czechs

The Slovaks

The sentimentalist in me likes to think that the similarity was intentional, and the heart motifs are a message to the world that, even though Czechoslovakia split over 20 years ago, their two countries are still united in love! Aww. Or perhaps a more likely explanation is that the hearts are a subtle form of protest against Russia's brutal anti-gay laws (though interestingly enough, Wikipedia tells me that the Czech Republic is much more liberal on LGBT issues than Slovakia is). At any rate, these uniforms are too adorable, and my own Czech heart is touched.

But I think my favorite uniforms among the Slavic countries might be Poland, combining a chic snowflake motif with the colors of the Polish flag and gray, my favorite neutral.



Speaking of gray... France, you know I love you, and those jackets with the nipped-in waist and the big Lacoste tricouleur crocodile are pretty fantastic, but I just CAN'T with the khakis. Put these athletes in navy blue pants, though, and it'd be a win.

Photos of the Czech, Slovak, and Polish teams by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images. Photo of the French team by Mark Humphrey/The Associated Press.

Joszef the Plumber

When I first heard the phrase "Joe the Plumber," I was at a North Beach comedy club watching the final presidential debate and sipping a panaché.* If I'd been even slightly more drunk, I wouldn't have believed my ears when the debate turned into all Joe-the-Plumber all the time: it was like both candidates had turned into parodies of themselves, bending over backwards to prove that they could appeal to "the common man." (Part of the reason for this is that I missed the very beginning of the debate and assumed that "Joe the Plumber" was a metaphor like "Joe Sixpack" or "John Q Public" rather than an actual guy that Obama had met.)

The resultant Joe-the-Plumber mania reminded me, as it did Roger Cohen, of the hysteria a few years ago in France over the "Polish plumber." Basically, French people feared that strengthening the European Union would make it easy for residents of poorer Eastern European nations to move to the West--thus the dreaded "Polish Plumber" would take away jobs from hardworking French plumbers.

Cohen's column left out the best part, however: the Polish tourism board heard about what was happening in France and prepared an ad featuring a Fabio-like male model dressed in a plumber's uniform, with the slogan "I'm staying in Poland... Come and visit."

Years later, it still makes me giggle every time I look at it.

*Panaché = A French drink, half lager beer, half lemonade. Yes, I know this makes me a San Francisco elitist.