"Boyle, the Oscar-winning director of Slumdog Millionaire, spent almost four times less money and deployed roughly one-tenth as many people. But he outstripped the previous Olympic host city by flaunting what the Chinese actively suppressed. This was pageantry as jiu-jitsu. While Britain's coalition government weighs further cuts to its government-run health-care system, Boyle went out of his way to honor the National Health Service, with real NHS employees as nurses capering on hospital beds. The show also included a nod to the early-20th-century suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst and the Jarrow Marchers, who in 1936 walked more than 300 miles from County Durham to London to protest hunger and joblessness. When Boyle made a point of inviting their descendants to the proceedings, he also made a point to us." - M F