The Stupidest Man in America

DavidDP

"in their generous welfare provisions for the weak and the useless, the NFL, MLB and the NBA come vastly closer to Thiessen's definition of "socialism" than anything in the soccer universe."

Indeed, you can't even sell logo space on uniforms.

Gaw

He deserves ridicule and disdain so very much. It's a shame that every time this happens there's a link to his latest stupidity which might be interpreted by his employers as an indication of his pulling power, even popularity.

Perhaps he should be ignored?

Bill Rees

Alex, I agree with you about the lack of humour (or anything else) in that article, although I agree with the writer that 'soccer' is a useless sport.
Not because it's a socialist sport, however, but because it is bland, pedestrian and inherently unexciting. The only way it can be made exciting is by tribalising it, which inexorably leads to hooliganism.

Naomi Muse

Ah! But the writer was talking about the nation which has a 'world series' without involving the world.

Shows a wierd sort of protectionism really.

Bill Rees

Naomi Muse, the World Series gets its name from the defunct New York World newspaper, which sponsored the original series.
Its title isn't quite as arrogant as it seems.

TheClouds

Bill Rees, the title IS as arrogant as it seems. It's a common misconception that the World Series was named after the New York World, and this has long been refuted. The paper never had any association with baseball, other than in it's reporting of results (along with many other newspapers of that era).

The World Series was so named not because of any affiliation with a corporate sponsor, but because the winner was considered the "world's champion". The first two championships went by a variety of names - "Chamionship series", "World Championship Series" etc before eventually becoming standardised as the "World Series" we know today. The suggestion that the game ever had any link to the newspaper is simply an urban myth.

In response to the article, I wholeheartedly agree that elements of American sports display closer ties to socialist ideals than football. Take the draft, where the strongest teams are penalised (those high earners) by awarding the pick of the best upcoming players to the weaker teams (let's call them hard working families) as a prime example.

David Lindsay

Oh, if only. And you are quite right about the NFL, MLB and NBA. As long as you do not actually call it by the S-word, America has always been rather good at it, with her big municipal government, her pioneering of Keynesianism in practice, her strong unions whose every red cent in political donations buys something specific, her very high levels of co-operative membership, her housing co-operatives even for the upper middle classes, and her small farmers who own their own land. Once the universal public healthcare option has come to be, everyone will say that it is as American as apple pie. Which it is.

The worst thing that ever happened to football was the abolition of the maximum wage. Football is now, like any other branch of the fashion industry, an example of what homosexual men think that heterosexual women will like. Each England player’s new strip is bespoke – measured for, and then run up by, a Savile Row tailor. Each new member of the squad now goes through this, as a sort of initiation. What a touching act of solidarity in the current economic climate.

I sometimes wonder why the really big clubs still bother with football. They are so rich that they could name a “squad” of simple beneficiaries of some sort of trust fund. The fashion, the glamour, the gossip, the drugs, the drink, the sex, the lot could then just carry on as before, with no need for training sessions or what have you. Who would be able to tell the difference?

The pricing of the working classes out of football, its legendarily bad treatment of its staff, and its use as a sort of circus of performing chavs as there might be performing seals or the performing monkeys like which they are now even trussed up, cannot be tolerated for ever. Or, indeed, for very much longer at all. Mutualisation, perhaps with a heavy dose of municipal involvement where grounds are concerned, is the last hope. If there is any hope. There may very well be none.

ndm

The socialism of American sports starts with the municipal funding of stadiums. I think a city that gets a blackmail demand for a new stadium or the team will go should just buy Greyhound bus tickets for the team.

SL Mattison

Good job and hats off to Marc Thiesson for getting the Anglo fogies in a fume! Watching soccer is like watching paint dry - boring indeed. And World Series Baseball needs no publication to justify its bellisima bragadocio. Other countires have tried to enter the playing field of America's trademark game - such as Japan or Canada, and more often than not just can't come up with as tasty a hot dog or corned beef on rye. World Series reflects the confidence of the most athletic nation since Sparta. Ever since I transferred from UCC, Canada's Eton, to the more athletic Hill School of Pennsylvania, I detected a more robust physicality the world relies on more and more, ever since the ambitions of the Jihadis were stirred. Eat up your envy, Tommies, haha! - there's never been sporting events like the ones for which Kate Smith sang, ...."God Bless America, Land that I love!"

tommyt

I am a big fan of American sports but I dont really know where to start with this.

Is * FOOTBALL * a socialist sport ?

Taking as given as a moment that you can assign a political ideology to a pastime the answer reamins a solid no. There are no salary caps, no drafts which protect the poor & weak from the strong and wealthy, no strikes (the French, of all people, refusing to train for an hour does not count), no lock outs, very few restrictions on sponsorship and precious little help for teams who run into financial difficulty - in the UK if a team goes into administration it is immediately docked points which often leads to relegation.

There are draws of course (though not in knockout stages of competitions) but thats not a socialist concept its merely a result of a game arrived at fairly without having to contrive the TV dinner that is the NHL shootout or the (albeit attractive) absurdity that is college football overtime.

Consider this, yanks, had the Isner vs Mahut game been played in your country the final set would have ended 7-6 to someone.

As for the non-competitive nature of youth football - might I respectfully suggest that your man gets on a plane and travels to any given football pitch in the West of Scotland to watch an under-9's game, under-13's if he's brave enough. I have only broken three bones in my life, all playing football, all before I was 16.

AndyinBrum

Baseball is rounders is a girlsgame played at school.

Rugby's a proper game

Richard of Moscow

Football suits us - cruel, tense, greedy, and with a thin line between success and catastrophe.
Surely the draft system in US sport, where instead of relegation the bottom teams get first pick of the new batch of players, is the perfect example of rewarding weakness and failure and punishing success.

Richard of Moscow

Oops! Sorry, I didn't notice TheClouds had already made the same point.

anne allan

AndyinBrum - baseball is rounders and it's only played in the summer by girls who are too plain or lacking in sporting ability to bag a school tennis court.
I'm not saying what I played. The only upside to winter was Christmas and playing hockey.

MattF

At least Thiessen, in his droll way, didn't say that Americans regard soccer as 'torture'.

Alex

No criticisms can be made of baseball by any individual that defends a sport that makes an art form out of taking dives and faking injuries. Soccer (and, yes, it will always be soccer) places a premium on all that is pusillanimous and cowardly. I challenge any reader to name one prominent soccer player who weighs more than 140 lbs and wouldn't shrivel like a wilted flower when confronted with even a minimal display of masculine aggression. Really, how can you respect these people?

Dips to DC United

Alex - How about Clint Dempsey just for starters.

I would take the action and excitement in the Ghana - Uruguay match over anything the Nationals have produced in the last year!

Unless you somehow find watching a "phenom" hurling 98mph fastballs past a bunch of overweight muscle-bound clods riveting, I can't think of any baseball game that can hold a candle to what is on display at the World Cup.

Conservative Cabbie

Alex

I've seen some pretty dumb things written about American sports on this side of the pond too. I don't think the blind spot about another cultures sporting obsessions is unique to the US.

However, I do disagree with you on one thing. Thiessen is not the dumbest man in America. That award goes to the man who is STILL obsessing about Palin's birth canal.

fifer

Splendid. Coming next from Thiessen:

- why are Europeans so fat,
- why do Europeans all drive SUVs,
- and, of course, why are all Europeans right-wing gun nut Christian fruitcakes?

fifer

Cabbie - I think the issue here is that this isn't a blind spot about Kabbadi, or Turkish wrestling - it's a blind spot about the sport that the entire rest of the world plays.

As for Palin, I'd think the title of stupidest man in America can be fairly shared among the 25 million men who thought (and in many cases still think) she was a reasonable candidate for national office.

Conservative Cabbie

Fifer

No. The stupid ones are those who cannot think for themselves. Those who blindly accept the criticisms and lies without engaging their own brains and who judge people based on hype rather than their own considered opinions. I'm not saying you fall under that category, but there are plenty here who do - the same people who respect the "opinions" of The Atlantic's gynaecologist in chief.

And I think you'll find that the stupidist man award goes to those who awarded Obama a nobel peace prize, the so-called educationed establishment that named him the 15th best President ever and those that think the sun shines out of his backside (Sullivan again). Obama doesn't have thinking supporters, just an obsessed fanbase - he's the political equivalent of the Spice girls.

Fergus Pickering

He's got one thing right anyway. Football is pretty boring. Scoreless draws and all that. Rugby used to be boring but they changed the rules and now it is more exciting. Perhaps (I am no expert here) some relaxing of the off-side rule would increase the tally of goals. 3-2 ought to be the sort of score line we are looking for. Rudolf Steiner entirely agreed about the unnaturalness and football is forbidden at their excellent schools.