College football and religious wars

Baylor beat Texas this past weekend. At Texas. Maybe you noticed. Maybe you thought, "That's unusual." Or "I guess Baylor is having a good year and Texas a bad one." Maybe you even thought, "Good for Baylor." But I'll bet you didn’t think, "It's a sign of the apocalypse."

Yet that seems to be what people think this year whenever Boise wins (or TCU) or there's talk of Utah playing for a national championship. Why can't they just say, "Wow. Sounds like Boise/TCU/Utah is having a championship year." It doesn't have to be "My God can beat up yours."

Change is unsettling. Yet life is change.

We forget that Florida State and Miami were once football backwaters before Bobby Bowden and Jimmy Johnson (respectively) showed up to change that. I was alive then, and I don’t remember anyone complaining when those programs started to win. Surprise, sure. But it didn’t pose a threat.

It's a different culture now. As the recent elections show, we are now a country obsessed with making and keeping as much money as we can, damn the consequences to those around us. That is what is at the source of the sturm and drang over what would happen if Boise were allowed to play for a national championship or if a playoff system were put into place: money, manna from heaven. People are afraid that their God can't really beat up someone else's.

Bad examples

Michigan State football player Chris L. Rucker was arrested for drunken driving. The problem was (get this) it violated his parole from an assault charge.

Now the Coach, Mark Dantonio, says, it is Rucker's decision whether he travels with the team this week. Uh, no; it's yours. That's what being the coach is.

I am reminded of author Flannery O'Connor talking about why children in schools should have to read banned books. When one parent argued that her child didn't want to read them, Flannery replied, "[His] taste should not be consulted; it is being formed."

Dantonio: be the parent ... be the man .. be A man ...

How it's Done

The ruling class uses the promise of a better future life for you (religion, "progress") to obtain a better current life for them.

Mortality

Death is the price of admission. But the carnival will leave you awestruck.

Stockholm Syndrome

Stockholm Syndrome is one explanation for disenfranchised U.S. voters who vote in politicians who ram through policies favoring corporations over individuals (thereby further disenfranchising themselves).

The most important thing to good health is mixed greens: 10s, 20s, ...

Morality

The logical extension of any moral code that has no exceptions for abortion even in the case of rape is that each woman should marry her gynecologist.

The Personal is the Political

I talk about my personal experiences and inner life not out of self-obsession (OK, not ONLY out of self-obsession). I feel that people in our society cannot hear their inner voices. (Fitzgerald built an entire scene around it in Tender is the Night. The characters all try to decide who is American in a European bar, and the "tell" that lets them know is whether they can sit still.) The reasons why, I will go into later, but here I want to note why I don't write much about "popular" culture and news stories. They are myths. Not in the misunderstanding of that word as meaning "untrue stories." But in its meaning as "stories onto which each person can project their inner feelings." And when you deal with that, you deal with an archetype that is universal and not individual. Any opinion I offer is merely that: an opinion, a yea-or-nay to be shared or not by others. But my THOUGHTS about an event, my FEELINGS about it … those are worth considering because they are individual and arrived it through reflection and articulation. In fact, people hide behind opinions because they shield their feelings and thoughts. Opinions are easier to deal with (psychically).

Also, stories of the day are timely but not timeless. As Oscar Wilde said, "Any ism will soon be a wasm." And Andre Gide called journalism "Anything that will be less interesting tomorrow than it is today."

Ozzie Guillen and Prop 8

Here's something that's timely. (Another problem with blogging while living: things may be timely when written about but not when published if you don't have time to post.)

Ozzie Guillen and Prop 8. Guillen said that Latino baseball players do not get certain perks like Asian players; namely, a personal interpreter. True. The Chicago White Sox (the pro team for whom he coaches) said his views were "incorrect." Maybe politically but not factually It is a simple fact. The man whose name was signed to that institutional press release had never been a major league baseball player, much a less a Latino major league baseball player. So he does not have the experiential knowledge that Ozzie does. But the bigger underlying issue is that Ozzie claims there is a double standard. And there is nothing like pointing out a blatant double standard to make people rally to deny it (and thereby in actuality defend it).

Which is how it relates to the Prop 8 ban on gay marriage being overturned. Another double standard. If we could see the common humanity in each other, rather than the different that makes us uncomfortable about ourselves, then we could eliminate these double standards. However, that is not human nature.

Here's an example that maybe Americans can see because it is once removed. I have a Slovak friend who I visited in Slovakia shortly after The Wall came down. I saw graffiti in a small town saying. "N***er go home." I said I hadn't seen a single person with dark skin. He waved it away with his hand, "That's how the communists worked. They convinced you your troubles were based on your neighbor (even if they didn't really exist), so you fought amongst yourselves and they could keep power. As you know from living in the U.S. Blacks are no different than us. People in other countries can't understand why America is so racist." "But," I wondered about his country's oppressed people, "What about the Roma (gypsies)?" Without beating an eyelash, he monotoned, "But that's different. They're not human. They're animals."

* * *



I had another great experience in Krakow. I was touring the city's old Jewish area and stopped to admire a synagogue. A man approached and said in English but with a Polish accent. "You like?" I did. It turned out he was a local photographer, and he launched into the following story entirely in English. "The other day I saw some kids, skinheads, you know, walking past here and shouting about the Jews. I stopped them. I said, 'Why you look like such sad puppies? Poland's great era was because King Wenceslaus invited the Jews here when no other European countries wanted them. They brought money, arts.'" He shook his head. "'Learn your history,' I told them."

Death and Elevators

I was in the elevator the other day, thinking about death. Not the obvious metaphor of up-and-down or arriving someplace different. I was reading the inspection certificate. If it's not displayed, each day it isn't constitutes a "separate and distinct offense." People don't die just on the day of their death. They die every day afterward.

Life Review

I read a phrase in a book about grief after my dad died: "Life Review." It struck a chord with me. The book argued that it is always ongoing, not merely at a time of death. As someone who has always felt that and been reviewing my life, it struck home. But as someone visited by too many deaths of people close to me this year, it has brought me back to that activity or brought a new urgency to that activity. I have been scanning in old photos and mulling over old relationships. (If I ever wronged you, accept this: "I was wrong, and I apologize." That's the only thing that I wish my parents were able to say and mean. [The Mountain Goats devote a song to people who say they're sorry for things "they can't and won't feel sorry for."])

One of my siblings chided me for saying that I had processed the deaths of my parents in my thirties on my own. A therapist of mine told me that my parents were going to die and I had to make peace with that even if I could not make peace with who they were (and were going to stay). Essentially, you cannot expect people to change or to join you in making peace in your relationship with them.

Last weekend, I spoke with a friend I hadn't seen in ages, whose mother is terminally ill, and the friend said her mother would occasionally make comments apologizing for past wrongs or trying to make peace with people. "That's what everyone hopes for," I told my friend. "But it doesn't always happen; you got the Hallmark movie."

I got together with that friend because I was doing Life Review and trying to get back in touch with long-lost friends. The people inn your life will not always be there. And their exit will be sudden, no matter when it happens.

"Life Review" … Sounds like the title of a magazine … or a blog …

The life unquestioned is not worth living – Socrates (But the life unlived is not worth questioning – Anonymous)

I always think I am going to get back into the rhythm of posting on my blog, when in fact, real life gets in the way of me posting consistently on it. And if I were consistently posting, I wouldn't be living.

Why This Yank Hates Soccer (Football)

I'm an American, and I dislike soccer. But not for the usual reasons Yanks cite. What gets my hackles up is the role of the referees and goes back to the sport's origins. Soccer began as a rich boys' game in England. The early matches were held at public schools (the equivalent of private schools in the U.S.--even in this, we are opposites). The early referees were teachers at these wealthy schools, and the "rules" of the game evolved largely as a way for a teacher to reward or punish a boy, depending on the teacher's inclinations. The rules are a thinly disguised way to empower the teachers (sorry, referees), who were destined to less power and money than their charges, the sons of Wealth. I know of no other sport in which the referees can so determine the outcome of a game (unless of course the NBA actually enforced its rules, but that's a different essay). The reason soccer gets my goat is that it remains a game to empower a ruling class (teachers/referees), and not the huddled masses (players), and that, my friend, is anti-American.

Look at FIFA's rules, and you'll see that little has changed. Fouls are based on wording of whether a player does something like trip "or attempts to" (in the judgment of the ref). Also forbidden are "jumps at an opponent … charges an opponent … pushes and … tackles." Again if the player is charging the ball and not the opponent, the ref can nonetheless call a foul. It's all his judgment.

More telling is the small print. Other players that teachers (sorry, refs) can lord over (sorry, call a foul on) are those who: play "in a dangerous manner," "impede" an opponent, or (most damning of all) "commit any other offence, not previously mentioned in Law 12, for which play is stopped to caution or send off a player" — meaning if you, the ref, stop play, it's automatically an offense. You can invent them!

Needless to say this all goes very against the grain of the Yanks who threw off the idea of an aristocracy or anyone who could lord over anyone else.