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