Stop Me Before I Vote Again

you forgot the best part of her comment

I am sad that Billmon didn't seem to notice my query to him

i'm not worthy!!!!

Annie has us confused with another blog of "sectarian" stragglers aparently. We're mining 1970's CTW but she's mining SNL low-lights in the form of "Wayne's World."

You know, if I'd only majored in Culture A La' Fouccalt and not Illustration, I could have a field day with all this...

It's like a bizarro universe full of rabid sports fans who genuinely think they *are* the team;Who love the team owners more and more every time they fuck things up; Who excuse every nasty peccadillo the top player avoids legal trouble over; Who snap up and proudly display every useless, shoddy, ugly piece of merchandise with the team logo on it. Anything to avoid acknowledging that ticket prices are outrageous, the team sucks eggs, and while the stadium looks as imposing and glitzy as ever, the neighborhood around it is falling apart.

i'm the first one to admit i'm a shitty writer, and not even that original. by golly ms xeno, i can't tell you how much i enjoy this description here. i've copied it, next time i want to describe the fans of a certain administration i plan on putting it to good use, getting plenty of exposure. i'll give you credit for it too.

hang in there, maybe billmon will come back and comment on your excellent post, tho i doubt it . don't be sad.

The disdain many "lefties" hold for sports is unfortunate, given the almost essential role that sports holds in our societal thinking - particularly political discourse.

Politics is treated as sports, we're fans of one team or another. The goal is for our team to win. There is no essential moral or political difference between rooting for the San Francisco Giants or the LA Dodgers - we just have our side. Once we've picked our side, we decide on why they're good or why they're not.

The ultimate goal in sports is winning. The methods don't matter, short of certain kinds of cheating - Barry Bonds' steroids bad, Gaylord Perry's spitballs okay. Eliminating filibuster bad, vote fraud okay.

The talking heads paid to pontificate on sports are essentially the same as those on politics. In sports, they're paid for entertaining truthiness. Same as politics.

We have some sports fans on the blog here -- JSP, in particular, is completely besotted by the subject -- but I myself don't get it. Guilty as charged. Sports bore me to death.

Maybe that's why I'm immune to these partisan passions?

Geez, I'm gonna sound like a stuffed shirt, but I take sports about as serious as I take any other pasttime. In the end, it's just a game.

Politics is not sports. The way you participate (or don't) in politics affects your life and the lives of people around you.

Look, if the Twins or Vikes lose a game then, oh well, too bad, everyone goes home and there's the end to it. If a prowar candidate is elected in my district, people are going to die. Sure as shootin'.

And if I don't do everything I can to elect an antiwar representative instead, well, what the hell am I good for, anyway?

So, yeah, I know how all that sounds. But that's as best as I can put it.

[shrug.] I go to a AAA baseball game once in awhile. The tickets are cheap and you get fresh air. That's about it. I have never troubled myself to learn the difference between an RBI and an ERA, and I doubt I ever will.

Does this mean I'm elitist ? I don't care for philosophy, either. Snored through my required freshman class in '84/'85 even though A Big Name was teaching it. Never looked back. Let's split the difference.

Sports fans don't bother me much as long as they don't treat it like a religion. I'm the weirdo in my supposedly definitive East Coast Liberal family both for my politics and for my lack of interest in even one big-name team or event.

At any rate, I think it's safe to say that if the DP were a sports team, the leadership would be loudly and fiercely despised by the fans. Also, the coach's heads would be rolling much more routinely than is, say, indicated by the token McAuliffe/Dean switch-off.

But which is the game, AlanSmithee? I watch Bush and Kerry debate, and I cast my vote. Maybe it's a relevant vote (in Ohio). Maybe it's not counted, and not a relevant vote. My (?) candidate loses. My predictions are wrong.

I watch the world cup, I go to a sports website, see a poll on the side. "Who do you think will win the World Cup?" I click on Italy. A vote. As relevant? More relevant? I watch an entertaining match and my team wins. Hoorah, I go home happy. Same as Al Gore's lockbox? Lockbox ain't never done anything for me, but the Czech Republic just gave me joy for a time.

How much money in John Kerry's leftover war chest? How much money in Alex Rodriguez's contract?

Not liking sports is fine. There are sports I don't like. There are sports I do like. But understanding sports? That's understanding America. Cliche, I know, but I can't say that it's wrong.

I think Rowan is right (understanding sports = understanding America). And not just America, come to think of it. Fanship seems fairly keen elsewhere too -- I had dinner at a Brazilian bar last Tuesday, and that was a very happy place.

I don't get it personally but that doesn't mean I can or should disdain it. The problem is when politics degenerates to the point that it's just team sports, and has no more practical content than fanship of the Greens or the Blues.

Are the members of political parties like sports fans? In a general way, sure. Insofar as they're also like religious cultists, members of fraternal orders or Grateful Dead groupies.

Can you understand America by studying sports? See above.

"Sports fans don't bother me much as long as they don't treat it like a religion."

and of course the other book end:

religion fans don't bother me as long as they don't treat it like a sport

-------------------------

my wc field's like pop

a besotted golfer

used to say

"if you never saw
a bunch of white boys bull ridin'
you don't understand how in hell we stayed in vietnam so god damn long "

Entertainment and sports are the means by which the system distracts the plebs from paying attention to how it screws them left and right. And it is effective because the system has already killed the educational system which could and should have taught them how to think independently and critically. Instead, it is indoctrinating them into conformity and obeisance and they cannot figure out that they are being screwed even when it's obvious.
It's not Bush and the neocons and the democrats that is the problem. It's the dismissal of knowledge and reason from society which ensures that the system produces Bushes, Clintons and neocons. And there is no solution to that. The system always degenerates into fascism and crumbles, like all big empires.
The notion of a trend from dictatorship to democracy is an illusion. In history it was the other way around e.g. Rome and Greece and Nazi Germany started as democracies and became dictatorships.