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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2009-04-30, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, APRIL 30, 2009. PAGE 5. Bonnie Gropp TThhee sshhoorrtt ooff iitt Strange comfort Loyalty to one sports team is hard to justify. The players are always changing; the team can move to another city, so you’re actually cheering for your clothes to beat the clothes from another city. – Jerry Seinfeld He’s right. Take Mats Sundin. The big Swede was captain, heart and soul of the Toronto Maple Leafs for about 11 millennia. Then last year in the twilight of a stellar career he opted to sign on with the Vancouver Canucks. These days when you see an arena full of hockey nuts watching the Canucks play the Leafs it’s like watching a mass spontaneous mental breakdown. When Sundin grabs the puck you can sense the Leafs fans suppressing a lightning bolt of joy (“GO, MATS! NO – WAIT!”) Meanwhile Canucks fans are trying their damnedest to cheer for Sundin but they’ve hated this guy, helmet to skate blades, for most of their lives. And suddenly he’s on their side? It’s like finding out Dick Cheney is really a loveable, long-lost uncle. At least that’s how I imagine it must feel. I have to guess because I never received the fan gene. I wouldn’t consciously don an Edmonton Oilers sweater or a Blue Jays ball cap or a Raptors windbreaker. Why would I? Do I look like I’d be comfortable sitting on the Oilers bench, playing shortstop behind Roy Halladay or shooting hoops with Jose Calderon? Who would I be fooling? It’s not that I don’t like sports. I’m a sucker for grace, stamina and finesse whether displayed by a boxer or a ballerina. My eyes are drawn to the CFL Highlight Reels unspooling on the TV over the lunch counter. I’m as thrilled as any other Canadian when some apple-cheeked innocent from Bucktooth, Labrador bursts into the media spotlight and dazzles sports commentators into dubbing him ‘the next Gretzky’. And I can think of few more pleasant ways to pass a late spring twilight than to sit on wooden bleachers, sipping bad coffee and watching a bunch of kids play baseball. But a loyal team supporter? Of professional, millionaire athletes? Nah. I don’t care if I’m watching the New York Yankees or the Medicine Hat Mud Hens; the Montreal Canadians or a Canadian Tire pick- up squad. I’m there to see a game, not to become a religious disciple. Extreme loyal fans – the certified berserkers who scream themselves hoarse, paint their faces in team colours and shave their heads to tease team logos out of their hair follicles – scare the hell out of me. They always make me think of buzkashi. Buzkashi is to Afghanistan as the World Series is to America; as the Stanley Cup playoffs are to Canada. Afghanis, Turks and Persians have played the game since the days of Genghis Khan. At first blush, buzkashi looks like a less genteel version of polo. There are 20 extremely tough-looking players mounted on 20 even tougher-looking horses. The big difference is, there’s no polo ball in buzkashi. What there is instead is the disembowelled corpse of a recently slaughtered headless calf. Object of the game is for one team of riders to grab the carcass, fight off their opponents and dump it in a vat at the end of the field. Sounds barbaric because, dammit, it is. But it’s insanely popular in Afghanistan. And it’s incomprehensibly violent – so violent that even the thuggish Taliban banned all buzkashi games during their brief reign. On the other hand, I was present, in my misspent youth, at Junior A hockey games where some of the spittle-speckled, profanity- shrieking goons in the stands would not have looked out of place at a buzkashi victory parade. Fandom does not often bring out the best in folks. But it’s natural. Humans, like sheep, sparrows and herring, have a tendency to gather in large, mindless, comforting groups. Behaving as a herd – (and is there any behaviour more herdlike than The Wave, that curious synchronized group ripple that undulates across spectators in stadiums and arenas from time to time?) – brings us pleasure. The pleasure of not having to decide or choose or even to think for a bit. Humans take solace from mass movements like that. It’s something that drill sergeants figured out a long time ago. Historian William H. McNeill observed: “When a group of men move their arm and leg muscles in unison for prolonged periods of time, a primitive and very powerful social bond wells up among them. This probably results from the fact that movement of the big muscles in unison rouses echoes of the most primitive level of sociality known to humankind.” Which helps to put a few modern anomalies in perspective. Anomalies like, well, The Wave. And buzkashi. And Fox News. And the sight of the captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs in a Vancouver Canucks jersey. Arthur Black Other Views Take me out to the ball game Being married to one of the most powerful men in the land ought to be a help to someone running to lead a political party. But it also could be a handicap. Christine Elliott is one of four members of the legislature running for Ontario Progressive Conservative leader. She is married to federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. Elliott, it should be stressed from the start, has been an MPP only three years. But she has strengths of her own including being intelligent and articulate and able to present a case well with skills honed arguing as a lawyer. She deserves to be in the race on her merits. This is true particularly at a time opposition parties seeking to push out the mostly comfortable Liberals are looking for new faces. The New Democratic Party recently chose a leader, Andrea Horwath, also with limited elected experience. Being married to Flaherty gives Elliott advantages and disadvantages. He is number two to Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper and when he speaks investors sometimes tremble and auto-manufacturing heads squirm. There has not been a previous situation in Ontario, and possibly Canada, where a candidate for provincial leader was so close to a senior federal minister, so it is not possible to predict based on precedent. But one advantage is Flaherty already has run twice for party leader in Ontario, where he also was finance minister, and lost, because, although smart, he was just too far to the right on policies for many Conservatives. Flaherty has brought in some of his key organizers from previous campaigns to help his wife and they will have learned the pitfalls and how to avoid them. Flaherty also has admirers from his past campaigns, where he finished second both times, and was the most stirring speaker, and some will feel prompted to consider supporting his wife. Some Conservatives will support Elliott because they want to be on the right side of a federal finance minister when they lobby for causes. This a party crammed with people who make their careers in public relations and lobbying. Elliott also was involved more than most wives in her husband’s previous leadership campaigns, because she long aspired to go into elected politics, but agreed he should go first, and she made contacts in them that will help her. Among the disadvantages, Elliott as an opposition backbencher is virtually unknown, but Flaherty is high profile, so some newspapers inevitably have reported her entry to the race with headlines such as “Flaherty’s wife joins Ontario PC race,” “Federal finance minister’s wife runs” and “ “Step aside hubby, says Elliott.” These will reinforce the belief some already had that Elliott is no more than the wife of Flaherty, running for leader primarily because her husband has pointed the way, and is some sort of appendage of her husband, which belittles her when she is a legitimate candidate in her own right. Flaherty also made enemies in the Ontario party by being over-aggressive toward opponents in both his races for leader, charging his more moderate rivals, Ernie Eves and John Tory, the eventual winners, were Liberals in disguise, and some may want to take their revenge on his wife. Opponents and particularly some news media who thrive on conspiracies may be keen to portray Flaherty as an eminence manipulating his wife from behind the throne, which will not help her. Some Conservatives also will be wary of choosing a leader who is so close to someone at the top in the federal government she may be seen as subservient to it. Conservatives in Ontario won many elections over the years partly by insisting the province should be independent of governments in Ottawa, which most of the time were Liberal. Elliott, whose record shows she is a more moderate Conservative than the other candidates, also is trying to establish herself as the only moderate in the race. But this is not easy when you are married to a guy named Flaherty. Eric Dowd FFrroomm QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk The end of the day, the time to return home, to the place away from the daily crazy, to your sanctuary. Once the door closes behind you, a few moments are spent taking some quiet breaths before resettling yourself into the personal domain. Then you make the mistake. Such an insignificant effort, so unconscious, so subtle, but there it is, the slight push, and you have permitted the intruder. His sonorous voice, its somber message, its serious delivery taint the security of home. From the television the news of the day fills the airy space of the living room, bringing events and tragedies closer. The plunging economy, rising unemployment, another soldier lost, a little girl missing, are realities which on their own have the ability to make one heartsick. Together, doled out in one sitting they’re just sickening. Staying abreast of current events is important. To paraphrase Franklin D. Roosevelt from his 1940 State of the Union address, it’s not good to bury one’s head in the sand. But it sure can be tempting. I don’t like watching the news. Strange words, I know, from someone working in media. But sitting in front of the television for a healthy dose of what went wrong today, with a good-news anecdote thrown in as an ineffectual antidote is the most depressing way one could spend an hour. I prefer to gather snippets, pick and choose what I can handle and leave the rest for later. It seems to make all the doom and gloom just a little less overwhelming. Not that we shouldn’t be used to doom and gloom, of course. Something that’s sustained me over the years is the old axiom “the more things change the more they stay the same.” When we look at the economy, the world situation, even controversies and concerns in our backyards, are things really that much worse than they were 10, 20, 50 or 100 years ago? I for one don’t think so. Consider lyrics written by P.F. Sloan in 1965: The eastern world, it is exploding, violence flarin’, bullets loading’ His words of protest in Eve of Destruction were given voice by Barry McGuire that same year and every one is as relevant today as it was close to 45 years later. The 1960s with the fight for civil rights, Vietnam, the murders of John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., drugs and nuclear threat certainly coloured the news in frightening shades. Decades before brought to us World Wars, the Cold War, Hitler, the stock market crash and the Great Depression. Civil unrest in Ireland, recession, genocide, AIDS and terrorism are among the evils to have marked the time since. When we are inundated by bad news, it’s difficult not to let the world’s woes weigh heavily upon us. A sense that the whirlpool is spinning beyond control and we’re caught in the vortex on our way down seems popular. But aren’t we always? Can you remember a time when the world wasn’t crazy? I know I can’t. Yet I never hear others say that. Can I be, I wonder, the only one who thinks the bad today is the same bad as yesterday’s? Nope! Happy to say I read the same thought in a book the other day. Essentially, the author agreed with me that like the stock markets, the world can hit bottom, but history has shown it will rise again. It’s not exactly good news but there’s some Marriage could affect leadership race We have to learn to be our own best friends because we fall too easily into the trap of being our worst enemies. – Roderick Thorp Final Thought