Category Archives: Sport

UPDATE II: Go Seahawks! (What Are We Doing? Winning!)

America, Drug War, History, Nationhood, Sport, The Zeitgeist

Go Seahawks! Go Richard Sherman; do whatever it is that a cornerback does. Remember: “Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning throws ‘ducks.'”

I probably botched that one up. What I know about American football is dangerous, other than that it originated in the game of rugby (Go Springboks).

I grew up mostly with basketball and real football—the kind Pelé played with no dog muzzle and some real hot footwork. Nevertheless, I am rooting for my home team, the Seattle Seahawks.

Why? It occurred to me that the football fetish in the US has arisen in the context of a country whose inhabitants share very little other than The Game. The host country’s history and founding documents have been turned into a liability by its educrats. The language has been dumbed down and demoted as the number of non-English-speakers clamoring for official recognition for their respective tongues rises. And the faith that once united those who fought to establish the republic has been banished from the public square and confined to the shopping mall, where adherents shop for God.

I love The Evergreen State. However, bar a few of them, I do not love its inhabitants. I share almost nothing with the pinko statists, except for the Seattle Seahawks, my adopted team.

So go Seahawks!

UPDATE I: (2/1): How could I have forgotten the other vital thing I share with residents of the Evergreen State? My bad. Drug legalization. Stop the drug war. “VICES ARE NOT CRIMES.”

UPDATE II: Anthem sung by a real singer, Renée Fleming, not by the likes of the wailing Beyonce and her booty. Gorgeous. Some real cuties on the respective teams.

We’re winning. Sharon Smith Fox is keeping score on Facebook. She writes, “Yes! and we just scored another touch town! Ilana. The score now is 29 to 0 (our favor) Go Hawks!!”

Richard Sherman And The National, Mindless, Racial Merry-Go-Round

Celebrity, Democrats, Intelligence, libertarianism, Media, Race, Republicans, Sport

Written by a scholar of color, whose intellectual and moral authority in the culture stem not from the force of his argument, but from the concentration of melanin in his skin cells—John McWhorter’s article, “Let’s Not Make Thug the New N-Word,” exemplifies the banal, racial back-and-forth that parades as “debate” in the US.

In the wake of the manufactured Richard Sherman brouhaha, Dr. McWhorter waxes fat and fuzzy on TIME over the artificial, politically dictated linguistic laws that govern discourse in this country (and explain why “dumbassery” is the norm). This racial roundabout proceeds, always, from the premise of compliance with preordained linguistic standards or laws.

When they rabbit on about race, America’s chattering classes—blacks, whites, Democrats, Republicans and the silliest of libertarians alike—exhibit an unthinking habit of mind. These are individuals (for they are not individualists) who’ve been trained by their political and intellectual masters to respond in certain, politically pleasing ways.

To tell you the truth, I have no idea what the fuss is over what Sherman said after the Seattle Seahawks’s victory over the San Francisco 49ers. What I know about the game is dangerous, but it appears that the Seahawks cornerback was merely commenting on an aspect of the game:

“I’m the best corner in the game. When you try me with a sorry receiver like Crabtree, that’s the result you gonna get. Don’t you ever talk about me!”

The man was pumped, as men ought to be in such a testosterone-infused game. But Sherman’s boisterous bit of theatre set in motion some racial, national free-association, which for the life of me, I can’t follow. Truly.

I’ll say this much: Sherman was correct to point out that his “outburst,” following the “defensive play that sealed his team’s trip to the Super Bowl,” was an extension of “his game-time competitiveness.”

The rest is of a piece with the mindless racial merry-go-round manufactured by America’s media types.

UPDATED: Blade Runner Still Walking On Water

Celebrity, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Justice, Law, Pseudoscience, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Race, South-Africa, Sport

A high-profile murder involving a class of people whose role in South Africa’s endemic crime is statistically insignificant occurred last week. The two wealthy white South Africans involved, however, will become a perfect foil for the hypocritical tele-twits of the West. The latter have said nothing about the carnage of crime in that country—and they’ll continue to say nothing meaningful at all.

Crime in South Africa should have been making news headlines across the world throughout South Africa’s overnight transition from minority to majority rule. It hasn’t. Blade runner Oscar Pistorius’ run-in with the law has occasioned the first such mention that I can recall by anchor-personality Megyn Kelly of Fox News, and her colleagues in the industry. (The killing fields of South Africa are dissected in “Crime, The Beloved Country,” a chapter in my book).

A statistical outlier, an anomaly—the murder of a (white) South African celebrity (Reeva Steenkamp) by another (Olympian Oscar Pistorius), allegedly—has newsmen in the West mentioning a subject they’ve so far submerged.

Steenkamp was a South African model. Pistorius is also a celebrity whose fame comes from being a tenacious (and talented) track-and-field annoyance. An annoyance, because most hardcore track-and-field fans want able and disabled Olympians segregated. (Yes, this is an intentional play on “loaded” words. Call the PC police!) The separation why? So as to allow fans (me) to enjoy the sport without the accoutrements of technology and the incontinent gushing that accompanies Pistorius whenever he makes a run for it.

In any event, how PC and TV perfect is this crime? (This or any other crime should never be called “a tragic circumstance,” as such vague language implies that bad deeds are invariably caused—never committed. And that they are caused by factors outside the perpetrators. (See “Rah-Rah For Rioters.”)

I wager that next, Anderson Cooper or Piers Morgan will call on the actress Charlize Theron to comment about the relevance of her pet campaign to stop violence against women in our former homeland, and its relevance to this case.

There is no relevance. Violence in the “Rambo Nation” is unidirectional: black on black and black on white. Violence against women—at least the kind that causes more than hurt feelings—follows the same pattern.

Meanwhile, the blade runner is still walking on water. Oscar Pistorius is receiving “overwhelming support” from his fans. Or so his agent informs the fans and the press.

UPDATE: FROM the Facebook thread. It’s just as I said. The Guardian is turning a statistical anomaly in this group (well-to-do whites) into a generic statement about violence against women in South Africa.

UPDATED: Football Frenzy (The Ravens And 49ers)

Aesthetics, America, libertarianism, Paleolibertarianism, Pop-Culture, Sport, The Zeitgeist

Piers Morgan, who is warring against a quintessential and meaningful American tradition—self-defense—has declared his affinity for another: the Superbowl.

MORGAN: “Listen, I know what this game means to America. It’s going to be a hell of a day on Sunday. I shall be glued to it, as always. I love the whole entertainment. I love the commercials. I love the football. I love the fact that it’s such a huge part of American culture. And may the best team win.”

The truth is that we foreigners do not get it—and will never get it. Also true: One can never really be an American unless one talks the talk about the game and the scene.

Oh well. Not belonging to the cool kids’ fraternity has never bothered me terribly. And at least one great American agrees about the obscenity of the whole scene.

“I don’t pay much attention to it, replied Ron Paul to a Piers Morgan question, in February of last year, during the 2012 campaign.

My sentiments exactly.

… the American football scene is obscene, starting with its incestuous fraternities, the rock-star status surrounding handlers and players, their pompom-waving, knickers-baring groupies, and the tantrum-prone fans who experience bare-fanged fury when their heroes let them down.

The ads are always a big point of contention. Thus, in 2012 too, Freedom Watch’s “J-Nap” (a coinage by Jack Kerwick for Judge Andrew Napolitano) struck a blow for “liberty” by calling on a middle-aged Madonna to challenge The Censor and repeat the feat of another peer, Janet Jackson. (Yes, “Libertarianism Lite” carries the day.)

The apparition the Judge wished upon us was described, in 2004 (“JANET’S SACK OF SILICONE & OTHER SYMBOLISM”), as a “sack of silicone-filled skin, awkwardly positioned on Janet Jackson’s chest. Few will forget how pop singer Justin Timberlake released The Thing from Jackson’s bustier during the Super Bowl halftime show.”

Add the effects of age and gravity to a surgically over-stuffed breast, and you end up with a veiny mass, mounted inorganically on the breastbone. Take my word: This is not something you’d want to wave about. It looks like a stretched-to-the-limits Bota Bag (also known as a wine skin), only not nearly as inviting. The photograph also captures the gaze on Justin Tinkerbelle’s girlie features. The reviewers, mostly groovy hip-hop heads, described the sequence as “a sex-charged duet.” Justin, Jackson’s partner in the “stunt,” looks as turned on as a surgeon removing a suture. The “sensuality” was, er, a bust.

Contra “J-Nap,” I was comforted to learn that a quaint Old-World, quintessentially American gentleman like Ron Paul was baffled by America’s annual football frenzy. (And is guaranteed to find the commercials as off-putting as the frenzy.)

UPDATE: I’m one of you. Hear me talk Ravens And 49ers.

The two coaches are brothers. One quarterback has been a starter for barely half a season. The sport itself is under a microscope for its violence, and the setting, New Orleans, is where the home team found itself recently caught up in a so-called bounty scandal — bounty — excuse me — scandal.
The spectacle and the game, Super Bowl XLVII, between the Ravens and 49ers, it’s all set for Sunday, with an expected worldwide audience of more than 160 million.

MORE at PBS.org. I won’t be reading this. It’s for you.