The allegedly egalitarian, unquestionably elitist, folks who run the Olympics came up with one of those “good ideas” that usually do not survive the hangover. They wanted to use ice dancing to celebrate the rural histories of the world. If your first thought is that this would be akin to a celebration of Mayan folk music by Wayne Newton, you are not far off the mark, as far as I can tell.

After all, what could possibly go wrong when you combine sequins, ice skating and one people’s traditional religious beliefs and millennia old culture? Well, I won’t keep you in suspense any more. PHILIP HERSH from the Tribune spells it all out nicely.

For years, ice dance costumes and programs have been so over-the-top they made it almost ridiculous to think this was a sport worthy of Olympic medals.

Then the International Skating Union turned what was only a farce into an opportunity for cultural insensitivity as well as bad taste when it decided dancers should use folk themes for their original dance in this Olympic season.

That led Russians Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin, the reigning world champions, to create a program with allegedly Australian aboriginal music and to perform it wearing brown face, tribal paint and costumes with clumps of faux foliage.

Sol Bellear, of the New South Wales state Aboriginal Land Council, told an Australian newspaper: “It’s very offensive. We see it as stealing Aboriginal culture, and it is yet another example of the Aboriginal people of Australia being exploited.”

Bellear has said he will write to Russia’s ambassador in Canberra to protest the dance. The 2010 Winter Olympics take place in Vancouver, which has focused attention on issues related to the status and treatment of Canada’s First Nations, just as the 2000 Sydney Olympics spurred discussions about Australia’s historically racist mistreatment of its Aboriginal population.

In the U.S. Championships, leaders Meryl Davis and Charlie White did an original dance Friday night to an Indian theme, using movements that could be seen as caricatures or cliches. But their costumes and interpretation have been greeted with approval on the Internet in comments from India.

Meanwhile, Kimberly Navarro and Brent Bommentre, fourth after the original dance, are using Afro-Brazilian music, but he wears a headpiece that recalls silent movie icon Rudolph Valentino as “The Sheikh.” Bommentre said he used the headpiece because he could not grow long enough hair for dreadlocks and rejected hair extensions.

Five-time U.S. champions Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto, who are second after the original dance, took a less risky approach, using a Moldovan theme.

While there is nothing inherently wrong about having dancers interpret ethnic themes, it looks absurdly out of place amidst the frivolity that is ice dance.

Even with well-intentioned efforts at sensitivity, there is an element of high camp rather than cultural authenticity when ice dancers do the folk programs.

For those of you who are not aware of the fine, albeit still Communist, country of Moldova, mentioned above, it is a small Eastern European country that has a very good soccer team, a large collection of naturist resorts and a legal age of 16 for, well, what the legal age is there for. So, if Belbin & Agosto are going to play a round of nude soccer on skates, count me among the curious. Otherwise, I think this will all count as Can’t See TV.

I guess I could kind of get it if the idea was to do traditional music from your own country. While even that could raise some issues, at least they could be caught in their country of origin

”Gee, Bob & Jane, do you really that wearing pink sequined tights while doing a black faced rendition of ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’ is such a good idea?”

“Listen, Ivana & Igor, we all want to celebrate our history, I am just saying that the Katherine the Great piece, complete with horse, might strike some as ....”

I realize that the skaters are tying to do the right thing given the rules they were handed. However, keep in mind that many of them have lead very isolated lives. Add in the fact that not every country boasts the cultural diversity of the U.S. and suddenly you have a whole group of people who have no clue what others would find offensive since they have no real clue who those “others” actually are.

Like I said, this probably sounded good at 3 AM after the 7th round of Manhattans. But, someone should have tossed that particular bar napkin out before they went back to their hotel rooms.

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