The Star: For Ukraine and Poland, the Euro 2012 hangover starts now
In one of his short stories, Polish science-fiction writer Stanislaw Lem imagined a spy from an alien culture making a report on the Earth’s activities based on years of distant observation.One of the things he marvels at is our piety — every weekend, tens of thousands of us fill large, open-air houses of worship to cheer on the priests, who work in teams on grass.Lem meant this, like he meant just about everything, as a swipe at totalitarianism and our circus-cult generally. Like all great satire, it turns out to be indistinguishable from the truth.Now that it’s over, Euro 2012 can be declared a success. The games came off on time. They looked good on television. Nobody important was hit by lightning or got close enough to touch Ukraine’s creepy leader, Viktor Yanukovych.