On TV and radio ads, they’re calling it Campbell’s NFL Chunky Soup, for the NFL Appetite.
Really now. NFL players are well tuned physical performers. Do you think professional athletes can afford to pump that much sodium, MSG, empty carbohydrates, and bad fat into their bodies? NFL players earn multimillion dollar salaries. Think they’re eating canned soup?
Do you think this might be false advertising? Campbell’s NFL Chunky is for the NFL Appetite. For the chunky NFL couch eater.
The Notre Dame football players are called the Fighting Irish. Where did that come from? They’re Catholic, so they’re Irish? They’d more likely be Italian, or Belgian, or everyone who speaks Spanish. What is it about the Irish?
Our country has a love affair with the Irish, the Catholic Irish, and it explains Saint Patrick’s Day and our support of the IRA. We fought for our independence from Britain, why shouldn’t they?
English friends used to ask me, why do Americans send money to the IRA? Don’t we see the results of the IRA bombings in London? Do we mean to be supporting cold-blooded terrorists?
I didn’t know the answers to those questions, except one: no, the American public was not regularly shown the devastating bombings in England. Curious. Americans want to love the Irish.
If our support of the Irish cause has anything the slightest in common to do with Notre Dame, I have an idea for the Arab peoples. Buy an American university, at least control of its team, and nickname your athletes the Fighting Arabs. Give them an inspirational Muslim coach. Why not? Imagine them, scrappy Arab underdogs in resplendent heroic uniforms, they too can fight with God on their side.
There is absolutely no reason why Americans can’t cheer for the beleagered Arabs, and won’t pray for an upset, regardless a fan’s normally favored regional school team. Go Arabs! Go Islamists! Go you Fighting Persians!
Much was made of Uday’s wrath when athletes on the Iraqi soccer team would return untriumphant. If a player made a gaffe, Saddam’s evil son Uday would send him off to the front. The Iran-Iraq Front at that time.
Americans are familiar with the lingo. It was a running joke on Hogan’s Heroes and became a timeless adage. Displease Der Fuhrer, you’re sent to the Russian Front.
Well now, where do suppose members of America’s military sports teams go if they fail to deliver the goods? If you are cut from the Army football team, or baseball team, or volleyball team, or basketball team, or any of the four branches of our military’s athletic self-promotion programs? Where are our soldiers sent if they are not playing for the home team?
We even send members of the military bands there. Our Eastern Front.
Today I watched the opening ceremonies of the White Olympics in Torino.
Yes, White Olympics. Virtually all the athletes are white. White because winter sports take place in northern climes where most everybody is white. White because winter sports require equipment beyond what tropical non-developed countries can afford their athletes. White because that is the color of the world aristocracy.
But the Summer Olympics were very much the same. Compared to World Soccer, or the NBA, or the NFL, or the AFL-CIO, the Summer Olympics are lily-white.
So everyone at the Winter Olympics is white, the entire South African team is white. The few dark faces among the white are citizens of white countries who trace their roots elsewhere.
When the American team made its entrance, I wondered, where were the boos? The American athletes were smiling and waving, many were hamming for the camera, one was talking on her phone. An audience was never shown, either booing or applauding.
But there would not have been booing at this pageant. This was a fete for the developed countries, presently at war with darker skinned countries. This was a white man’s club. The few delegates from dark countries were vestiges of the old colonial representatives, cousins of the western nations, returned home having lost their lands and authority to land-reform and indigenous efforts to reclaim territorial autonomy.
So this celebration was the bi-annual gathering of the ruling class, their athletes who can afford to practice their athletics full time, and the spectators who can jet around the world and attend the events.
And the symbol of power from which the ruling classes owe their supremacy was visible in the Olympic flame. Some might also find it was appropriate for the industrial city of Torino.
I thought it looked right out of Antonioni’s stark 1964 film Red Desert about industrial ennui, the multiple-funneled smokestack that is this year’s Olympic cauldron.
The Olympic looks like a rich man’s game.
An exclusive country club of photogenic faces,
the exceptions of which stand out rudely against
the art-directed scenes and so are avoided by the cameras.
In this age of Tiger Woods,
African physical prowess on white turf,
where are the black swimmers? black gymnasts?
black beach-volleyball stars?
And it’s all stars. I saw an unknown come in second
in the bike marathon. The news people didn’t know
anything about him, there hadn’t been a profile,
his win was unexpected, he was a Portuguese.
They ignored him. Perhaps he had not been vetted.
We saw him only in long shot.
And all those chances the athletes get
in front of the camera, to say something,
to speak out against what’s happening in the world.
The diciplined and obviously intelligent athletes
no doubt have an opinion, a normal average consciousness,
but nothing.
The Olympics should not be politicized?
But they are politicized with the Iraqi soccer team.
The Iraqi soccer team was a “Rocky Balboa story,”
overcoming the odds, flown in by British troops,
no longer in jeopardy of Uday’s wrath.
The Bush people are using the Iraqi team in ads,
and the media are using them to drive a point home.
I heard an NBC commentator say -actually say-
when contemplating the Iraqi team:
“It’s as if the world were at peace.”