The slogans have become no weightier over the past four years Mr Obama now wants to go "Forward"; his rival, Mitt Romney, prefers to "Believe in America"—but the stakes are, if anything, higher.
But nationalism is no longer as weighty an Olympic theme as it was during the Cold War.
There are no such weighty questions being asked in the other city about to host a Game 5, Washington.
Israel has pledged not to renew his detention if there is no new, weighty evidence against him.
The real deals, uncondensed, are no less weighty, but suddenly they're looking less scary, more approachable, more essential even.
The prime minister has been helped by the fact that, in the end, UMNO hardliners could find no sufficiently weighty figure to take him on.
Until they can do so, they bear the responsibility -- no less weighty than Mr. Arafat's responsibility -- for the immobility, the insensibility and the despair on both sides.
Yet even with the extraordinary legal maneuvering, involving issues no less weighty than constitutional law and the disenfranchisement of minorities, the race managed to amuse, befuddle and entertain.
But there are no words weighty enough to convey this decent lawman's feelings when he witnesses the slaughter of a herd of elk during the first winter storm in the Bighorn Mountains -- and then finds the demented hunter impaled on a tree by two broadhead arrows.
While the Guantánamo Six are tried in the US for conspiring to fly airliners into the World Trade Centre, in the United Kingdom no less weighty a case is heading for a jury trial at a crown court: the notorious mother of three Kate Badger of Wolverhampton is charged with throwing an apple core out the window of her car.
