By Lisa de Moraes
Saturday, August 16, 2008

Just when you thought things couldn't possibly get any worse for the scandal-plagued Beijing Summer Olympics Opening Ceremonies, comes word that those cherubic children wearing costumes of China's 56 ethnic groups, who stole our hearts as they carried the repressive totalitarian country's banner to the Scary Goose-Stepping Soldiers who then hoisted it up on the Official Beijing Olympic Games Flag Pole, were not actually members of those ethnic groups.

They were -- are you sitting down?

Actors!

" 'Ethnic minority' children at Olympics ceremony were fake," screeched the Associated Press yesterday.

"Fake fireworks, a fake singer and now fake children at the Olympics opening ceremony," screamed Reuters, joining the latest Olympics scandal cacophony heard 'round the world.

Technically, the children were genuine children. But they are members of the Galaxy Children's Art Troupe, which, the Asian Wall Street Journal reports, is made up of young actors and actresses primarily from the dominant Han ethnic group. They're like the white people of China.

But in the media guide for the Opening Ceremonies, the outraged reports scolded, China promised us "56 children from 56 Chinese ethnic groups" who would cluster around the Chinese national flag.

"It is typical for Chinese performers to wear different apparel from different ethnic groups," Beijing Games Executive Vice President Wang Wei told reporters yesterday. "They will wear different apparel to signify people are friendly and happy together."

Wang's also the guy who told the news media about the scandalous footprint fireworks seen in worldwide TV broadcasts of the Opening Ceremonies, including on our own NBC.

"Some footage had been produced before the opening ceremony to provide theatrical effect," Wang said earlier this week, adding that some fireworks "were genuinely produced. Some maybe were used from previously recorded material."

As that great diplomat Katherine Heigl once said, I'm going to be really honest right now -- he needs to just not speak in public. Period.

It appears this latest ceremonies scandal story was broken by the Asian Wall Street Journal under the headline "Chinese Children in Ethnic Costume Came From Han Majority."

According to that article, written by Loretta Chao and Jason Leow, about 92 percent of China's 1.3 billion people are Han and they dominate the economy and politics. The other 8 percent, about 104 million people, belong to various other groups.

The Opening Ceremonies costume ruse, the article said, recalls the custom at some U.S. sporting events of having non-Native Americans perform in traditional garb. The custom has become controversial, the article explains, and some schools have dropped their "Indian nicknames and mascots."

In the article, a resident of the capital of Tibet called the Opening Ceremonies "wonderful" and "recognized the third child on the left was wearing Tibetan clothes. . . . It's OK if they're not real minorities."

NBC's crack journalists had been all over this wardrobe scandal when it occurred during their network's broadcast of the ceremonies:

"All of the children you're going to be seeing tonight -- it's important to the organizers -- are average Chinese children from average families, chosen from some art schools around the area," Matt Lauer told the 34 million or so viewers back home.

"Joshua, what do we make of this now, from the children to the soldiers?" Bob Costas asked NBC's China analyst (and former Time foreign editor) Joshua Cooper Ramo, as the non-ethnic children in ethnic costumes handed the flag to the Scary Goose-Stepping Soldiers.

"I think it's a profound statement that will resonate in the hearts of the more than 1 billion Chinese watching this tonight, the idea that the state is the guarantor of the future of those children in a country that for so long could not guarantee the safety or stability of the society for generations of children," Ramo replied.

Oops.