Guest columnist Bill Johnston appears to be a flaming Democrat, but hey, even a broken clock is right twice a day. Seahawk Super Bowl hype in Seattle has got him thinking out loud, in today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
I think there's a false sense of community and importance when you live through others' activities; you lack meaning in your own life.....whether the Hawks win or lose it will not affect my life or your life in the least....There is national danger in the professional sports culture and its false importance. In the final analysis it means nothing and just clouds our concept of the real world. So next time I am asked "How 'bout them Hawks?" I will answer as always -- "Who cares?"
If you read the whole piece you'll notice Johnson's sideline hypothesis that maybe we're stoked about the Hawks in order to compensate for the horrors of Bush. This is pure partisan garbage, of course. But the core of his message on pro sports hits home.
Unless we're talking about Republican Mike Ditka's 1985 Chicago Bears. THERE was a team to root for; one with attitude and personality, reflective of the hometown. Today, too many pro athletes are just highly-paid contractors passing through our cities on the way to a better deal somewhere else, and pro sports team owners megalomaniacal tax-sucking leeches. And face it, sitting in front of the TV just makes you stupid, anyway. Especially listening to the yammering numbskulls announcing any sports contest. I'll be taking a long walk in the rain on Super Sunday.
Posted by Matt Rosenberg at February 03, 2006 09:48 AM | Email ThisMemo to Rabid anti-bush op-ed columnists: Get a Life!
Posted by: Jason Woodruff on February 3, 2006 10:09 AMI like the fact that the Seahawks are in the Super Bowl. I think it will be good for Seattle (the game is seen in 188 countries), but it’s a business and the players and coaches are little more than mercenaries (and many of them are just plain felons and thugs).
I think obcession with pro sports is adolescent at best. Living vicariously through overpaid tree stumps, some of whom probably can't read, is pathetic. Then to use tax dollars to suplement their income is outrageous.
After living in the Northwest for the last three stadium build (Safeco, Seahawks and Key Arena) all I can say is I hope the Sonics enjoy their new home. And 'Howard on Mercer Island' can go with them.
Pro sports teams are to Seattle what the 'Cultural District' is to Tacoma. It's grasping at straws to find some way of feeling significant.
Posted by: Republican (by default) on February 3, 2006 10:26 AMBecause, you know, walking alone through the rain using a smile of sad pity for my benighted neighbors as my umbrella is so much more constructive for the world than using the (false, false, false!) camaraderie of professional sports to find common ground with erstwhile strangers.
Those idiots sharing "Go Hawks!" cheers on the bus and actually (smirk) identifying with the team ("We're going to the Superbowl!")--don't they realize how stupid they are, and how useless it all is?
They really should be paying attention to me and my pithy thoughts instead. Damn them.
Posted by: George Barnstable on February 3, 2006 10:45 AMAsk Yankee, Celtic, Canadien, Cowboy, Steeler, etc., fans. There is absolutely an identity to being in a community with a winner. (in the interest of full disclosure...I'm a lifelong Cowboys fan. first game I went to was Super Bowl XII where Dallas beat Denver.)
Notice I didn't mention the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. They won it once. Big deal. The value comes to those communities where excellence and/or tradition are commonplace. It is very exciting, and I hope the Puget Sound area enjoys it fully. BUT...my pick is the Steelers.:)
Posted by: Danny on February 3, 2006 10:47 AMYou got to LOVE those tight ends!
I don't think it will give the left much more glee if the Seahawks win, in fact - more Repubs. will get a lift from it - because they are more the real men type that enjoy football - if a poll were taken, I believe you would see the trend among conservative men and women as opposed to politically leftwingnuts. Go Seahawks!
Posted by: KS on February 3, 2006 10:59 AMNot all life's activities have to be "important" and "meaningful," Bill just needs to relax.
This team of Seahawks is in many respects a class act. Could we please stop regretting them and our support for them?
GO HAWKS GO!!!
Posted by: Watchdog, A 12th Man on February 3, 2006 12:03 PMFor me, the rub is a "fair weather fan."
Sure it's great the 'hawks are going to the Super Bowl, but where was everyone when they were in the toilet bowl?
Posted by: Jack Burton on February 3, 2006 12:50 PMI am glad that people like art and long nature walks, and I am equally glad that others like drinking bear and watching wrestling matches, and still others like watching baseball.
Whatever you enjoy doing in your spare time should be your choice and not the choice of self-righteous elites.
Posted by: sgmmac on February 3, 2006 12:57 PM"The following Saturday afternoon I went with two friends to see a football match...I have known games that displayed the finer points of football much better than this one, but for all that it was a good match, clean and fast and exciting. Nearly everything possible has been done to spoil this game: the heavy financial interests; the absurd transfer and player-selling system; the lack of any birth or residential qualification for the players; the absurd publicity given to every feature of it by the press; the monstrous partisanship of the crowds; but the fact remains that it is not yet spoilt, and it has gone out and conquered the world. It is easy to understand, though some austere persons elaborately refuse to understand why these crowds in the industrial towns pay shillings that they can badly afford to see 22 professionals kick a ball about. They are not mere spectators in the sense of being idle and indifferent lookers-on; though only vicariously, yet they run and leap and struggle and sweat, are driven into despair, and raised to triumph; and there is thrust into their lives of monotonous tasks and gray streets an epic hour of color and strife...I never see them at a match without disliking their stupid partisanship, their dogmatism, the whole catcalling idiocy, but it is still good, when the right side has scored a goal, to see that wave of happiness break over their ranked faces, to see that quick comradeship engendered by the game's sudden disasters and triumphs. I know they do not last, that happiness, that comradeship...yet if it is a poor thing it is their own, and I am glad they have it."
J.B. Priestley, "English Journey" 1934.
Go Seahawks!
It's amazing that Dems claim to be anti-corporate welfare and them pump millions into a stadium that only makes money for the team. It's like the kid at the WTO riot smashing the window of a Nike store while wearing Nike shoes.
What else is amazing to me is that people will cheer for a foolish, inconsequential sports team and then jeer our troops or offer mere lip-service to supporting them so that they don't look unpatriotic. Strange priorities and values.
Posted by: Republican (by default) on February 3, 2006 01:02 PMSonics suck- I hope these bad attitude wife beaters leave Seattle.
Seahawks- way back in the 80's we all wore largent and zorn shirts. These were genuine good guys. Remember the Z car (some 280Z with a dorky seahawk paint job)? Too bad the management ran that team into the ground for 20 years before they could get momentum like they have now. I'm glad to see Zorn on the coaching staff and glad they are doing well this year.
If I had to keep 1 of the 3 teams, it would be the Seahawks.
Posted by: andy on February 3, 2006 01:23 PMSeattle, Washington--Route salesman Greg Norberg, thought by friends and coworkers to be a "fairweather fan" of the Superbowl bound Seattle Seahawks has been diagnosed with end stage Hydrophobia.
"Greg could always care less about sports," sobbed his wife Nancy, "I couldn't understand his sudden obsession with the Seahawks."
Friends and family agree that they were suprised when Norberg purchased a 12th Man jersy after the Hawks first ever playoff win, a ever 41-3 whooping of the San Fransico 49ers. However when the Seahawks clinched the NFC championship with their win over Carolina, Norberg was sporting full body paint and a giant foam finger.
Norberg's doctors ran a battery of tests at the behest of his wife, "When we see a formerly appathetic man turn into a superfan, there is either something seriously wrong medically, or the guy's a complete jerk trying to live vicarously through professional athletes," said Dr. Kenneth Jackson.
In it's advanced state, Norberg's disease is untreatable, so after the big game he will be taken out back of the log shed by his 12 year old son Travis and shot in the head.
Posted by: Dan on February 3, 2006 01:43 PMNevertheless, I'll be watching the Super Bowl just for the heck of it, and to watch the commercials. I could care less who wins.
If the Seahawks do win, though, it will be interesting watch Mayor Nipples take credit for it and pretend that he is running a "city of champions." It's a useful distraction from failing public schools, crumbling infrastructure, and business fleeing town due to over-regulation.
Posted by: BananaLand (aka Iguana) on February 3, 2006 02:01 PMYes the public had to spend some tax dollars for the stadiums and I wish that the teams had put up more, but our city & state are better off for it in the long run. Just like we are better off for the taxes that went to help Benoroya or SAM.
As for the Sonics, they knew what they had when they bought this team. If they want to restructure their lease/agreement with the city fine, but that arena is a good one and doesn't need to be re-done. Maybe lower the prices to fill it (especially suites) and you'd make more money.
Posted by: Dengle on February 3, 2006 03:17 PMI completely resent the atmosphere here in Seattle that implies that I need to care about this. Pro Sports is hyper-expensive theater-of-the-absurd and much like it's very close retarded cousin, Pro Wrestling, it needs mandated warning labels affixed to it that read, "What you are watching is stupid and absurd and you need to turn this thing off and re-examine your life choices immediately."
Boy, did that feel good.
And lest we forget, starting quarterback Hasselback, fullback Strong and center Tobeck are all solid Rs and big Dino supporters. Maybe my memory is faulty, but I don't remember a single Hawk who came out publicly for the D's choice in the 2004 gubenatorial election.
GO HAWKS!! BRING IT ON HOME!
Posted by: LoneWolf on February 4, 2006 08:36 AMsports make losers feel like winners.
that's why there are so many sports fans.
Posted by: abdul khalid on February 5, 2006 10:41 AMI'm the guy who posted earlier asking how yinz up there in the Northwest had felt about the way that you'd been treated by the teams during the campaigns to build your stadiums. Yeah, as the book title says, I guess we're all "Major League Losers."
Nevertheless, I've had a lot of fun during the build up this game. I've enjoyed reading your posts, even the articles on-line in the Seattle Times and P-I (YIKES!!!!). Since I just published the outcome of the game on my blog (www.toastmeister.blogspot.com), none of us will have to actually watch the game, but I will anyway, just for craps&giggles.
Hey--have a good one up there and enjoy it, no matter who wins!!!! :-)
Posted by: Greg on February 5, 2006 01:46 PM