Sunday’s main competition at the Paris Olympics: Apologies. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was competing against itself.

First, a fake apology for the sacrilege at the opening ceremonies, and second, a real apology for getting the North Koreans and South Koreans mixed up.

I stopped watching the Olympics opening ceremonies years ago, due to their increasing weirdness and the enthronement of John Lennon’s Imagine as the obligatory anthem. Imagine is an atheistic “hymn” that imagines no countries. While IOC members have no trouble holding mutually contradictory positions, less craven observers object to singing of “no countries” as the athletes march in, country by country, to compete on that basis.