Every household knows the drill.
The occupants are kicked back—bare feet on the coffee table—perhaps in their underwear, comfortable in varying degrees of their own residue.
Then, from somewhere under a crumpled newspaper (or is it behind a lint-ridden seat cushion?), the cell phone rings.
Long-lost Uncle Charlie (who is mistakenly perceived as being above such casual behavior) is just blocks away and wants to drop in for a visit.
Out comes the vacuum, the dust mop, the air freshener.
Within 90 seconds, a facade of elegance is ready to greet Charlie, while behind the closet door and under the pristine rug, reality is in hiding, holding its breath until company leaves.
And likewise, the Olympic ritual of whisking the unmentionable, the seedy, the scum, back into a deeper, darker recess—as if the host city were the only place in the world without such clutter—begins again.
Beijing in 2008, and Vancouver in 2010 both did it.
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