The Vanilli Principle

Little girl lip syncs at Olympic's Opening Ceremony.

The easy first reaction to this is to get all nationalistic and be like "Thank God we don't think like this in America!"

But in writing about how China has violated the Vanilli Principle — "thou shalt not provide false lip syncing" — I was struck by the notion that maybe we're not that different.

Another famous lip synching debacle came when Ashlee Simpson had acid reflux or did a hoe down or whatever her excuse was for the Saturday Night Live incident.

That made me think of her sister, Jessica. She's easy on the eyes and has a decent singing voice, but as an image for young females, her success sends a message similar to that of the Chinese Olympic committee: It's not what you can do, it's what you look like. Style over substance.

Jessica Simpson has made a career out of this principle. Just flash those pearly whites, Jess, and you'll be all right. Few seem to notice that Bugs Bunny stuck that "Space For Rent" sign on your dome. She's even made fun of her own lack of intelligence in those Pizza Hut commercials.

I'm not outraged about the Opening Ceremony incident because, as a whole, I just don't care about the summer Olympics. I love hockey, curling, snowboarding and skiing, so these are "The Other Olympics" to me. Although water polo is teh awesomeness. Yes, teh.

But I do think this says everything about the PR nightmare China is having. It wants to put on a happy face for the world and give everyone the impression everything is hunky dory, but when you're so concerned with your national image that you have to have a little girl lip-sync to a presumably better-singing little girl, that's not kosher in any language. Microcosm. Microcosm!

That tactic never works. When we figure it out, we abhor it because it's phony, which is what a lot of China's PR tactics regarding the Olympics have felt like anyway.

But are we any better? Well, airhead or not, at least Jess' does her own singing.