The social media coverage of the torching of San Francisco cannot pass without comment; there is so much to talk about. Over on Twitter, Ruby tweeted, “Social media tipping point: there is so much micro-coverage of the SF protests that the media will have less leeway to get it wrong.”

This gets to a common talking point about social media. As more and more people can snap pictures or stream video from their cellphones directly to the web, the whole world starts watching in a whole new way. Perhaps the revolution will be televised afterall.

Andy Carvin has been providing great play by play on Twitter about the torch, pointing to qik videos of the protest, posing interesting questions and retweeting other fun comments from the microblogosphere. “Anyone wanna place bets when the first Free Mumia sign will be spotted at the SF torch protest?… retweeting @sacca: Ha! The Pro-China folks are being Rickrolled at high volume from an office window above Embarcadero!… retweeting @rockbandit: "I'll be honest. Its weird being at a protest in SF and not hearing 'no blood for oil'"

Andy wondered if he was “the only one who feels bad for the torch runners who may have dreamed a lifetime for the opportunity to run.” There is so much tied up in all of this. When Kim was a teenager, she had opportunity to either ride with the U.S. Olympic Equestrian Team or go to college. She chose college, but has a special place in her heart for those going to the Olympics, and I suspect for the torchbearers.

Yet the torch bearing ceremony has always been a lightning rod for protests. The famous Bong Hits 4 Jesus case was about students who unfurled that banner during the passing of an Olympic torch. Now, I’m reading in various reports that the modern Olympics didn’t have a torch ceremony until 1936. The Associated Press puts it this way.

The Olympic flame wasn’t part of the ancient games, and the torch relay didn’t become a fixture in the modern Olympics until the 1936 Berlin Games, when it was part of the Nazi pageantry that promoted Hitler’s beliefs of Aryan supremacy in the world of sports.

So, I wonder, will the bridge will be carried by Dustin Hoffman the wrong way across the upper level of the Bay Bridge; “And here's to you, Mrs. Robinson, Jesus loves you more than you will know.”