Let the games begin. All eyes will be on Paris as the 2024 Olympics kick off in unique fashion. In a first, the opening ceremony will not take place in a stadium. Instead, spectators will assemble along the banks of the Seine as nearly 100 boats transport the world's top athletes from the Austerlitz bridge to the Place du Trocadéro, an elevated plaza near the Eiffel Tower. Friday, July 26, at noon on Peacock and 7:30 p.m. on NBC.

"Having heroes is a dangerous business," said Laura deCarufel in the Toronto Star. Until a week or so ago, Alice Munro was more than a Nobel Award-winning short story writer to many readers. The recently deceased Ontario native was "the oracle of the unspoken female experience," the great seer of women's secret lives who, in her mercy and wisdom, forgave her characters their moral shortcomings. But that was before Munro's youngest daughter, Andrea Skinner, revealed in the Star that she had been sexually abused by her stepfather when she was 9, and that her mother excused his behavior, staying with him for decades, even after he pleaded guilty to assault. Until this month, I counted myself a reader who loved Munro more than any other artist. Today, "some of us may never read Munro again." Those who do "will inevitably read her differently, sifting the sentences for clues to what we missed." 

"Although Munro did not herself abuse her daughter, her behavior was unfathomably revolting," said Xochitl Gonzalez in The Atlantic. When Skinner confronted her mother with details about the abuse 16 years after it began, Munro apparently accepted her husband's lame written defense: that the 9-year-old had been a "Lolita" who seduced him. Munro chose the abuser's ongoing companionship over repairing her relationship with her daughter. And she allowed her fame to protect her from the revelation of this damning decision, which was an open secret in literary circles and ignored by the author of a 2005 Munro biography. But "canceling" Munro and trash-canning her stories won't do. "The more effective response" is to realize we should never presume that our greatest artists are virtuous, and to engage with their work "not blindly, like acolytes" but critically, understanding that with some artists, "it is precisely their troubled terribleness that helped make that art excellent." 

In Munro's case, however, "the revelations don't just defile the artist, but the art itself," said Rebecca Makkai in the Los Angeles Times. When she wrote about women forgiving men for something unforgivable, as she often did, "I had always assumed that she was writing with tremendous wisdom," looking down on her quietly pathetic characters "with grace and irony." Instead, it's quite possible that she was sustaining her writing career by ruthlessly mining a family tragedy that she helped create. "Do we forgive her because the work is beautiful?" As an abuse survivor myself, I can't — especially because Munro's beautiful stories have taught me that there's no forgiving the unforgivable absent some "horrible compromise of the soul."

The workout guru who spurred us to sweat

Richard Simmons' life was changed by a note left on his car windshield. At the time he was a 270-pound exchange student in Italy, who'd parlayed his rotund appearance into roles in TV commercials and a Fellini film. "Fat people die young," read the note. "Please don't die." Horrified, Simmons transformed himself through diet and exercise — then rose to fame exhorting others to do the same. Clad in sequined tank tops and skimpy shorts, the hyperkinetic "Pied Piper of Pounds" was America's top workout guru in the 1980s, writing best-selling diet books, hosting a syndicated workout show, and selling tens of millions of workout videos such as Sweatin' to the Oldies. With relentless, campy energy, he donned tutus, chanted ("Fat, fat, go away / Give it all to Doris Day"), and hectored his subjects to sweat harder. "People need the court jester," he said in 2012, "so I keep that smile on and keep going out there to do what I do." 

Simmons was born into show biz in New Orleans, where his father was an emcee and his mother a dancer, said the Los Angeles Times. Selling pralines as a child, Simmons "learned to charm customers" but struggled with his weight and was taunted in school. He was studying art in Florence when he was discovered; he then appeared in more than 130 commercials, playing parts including a dancing meatball. Once he decided to lose weight, he turned first to pills and fasting, but after his health cratered, he became devoted to healthy eating and exercise. Moving to Los Angeles, he opened Slimmons, an exercise studio, in 1974, said NBCNews.com. "His flamboyant personality" attracted celebrity fans and the notice of TV producers. Soon he was "a regular on TV talk shows" and a celebrity in his own right. 

Simmons led classes into his mid-60s, said The Washington Post. But in 2014 he abruptly withdrew from public life, spawning "rumors and conspiracy theories" amplified by a podcast, Missing Richard Simmons, that offered "tabloid speculation." In terse social media posts, he referenced health issues. This year, he said he'd been treated for skin cancer and told followers to "enjoy your life to the fullest." That message was a continuation of his life's mission: to inspire and empower. "When I'm long dead and gone," he said in 2006, "it will still be, 'Love yourself, watch your portions, and move your buns.'"