Skip to main content

The Shared Language of Sports and Politics

By


We've often discussed how politics is seen as a sport, so I found it amusing that Bernanke would try to use the Washington Nationals success as an object lesson for the gridlock in Congress, which faces a looming crisis on the debt ceiling once again.  Fortunately, in sports you can be dictator.  A general manager is only answerable to the owner.  Players are bought and sold based on their productivity, and cities are usually left to cover the bills for the lavish stadiums these professional teams enjoy.  So, it isn't a very fair analogy to say the least.  Just the same, Bernanke used the opportunity to boast of his favorite team.

Recently, Obama weighed in on the NFL referee lockout.  Other politicians frequently use sports analogies as a way to identify with their electoral base.  The debate the other night was compared to a prize fight, with a number of photoshopped images to demonstrate the point.  It seems we just can't get away from this, especially in a highly charged election year, where the presidential race is often compared to a horse race.  Here's a good piece from BBC on the shared language of sports and politics.

Comments

  1. avrdsOctober 6, 2012 at 4:16 PM

    Well, we do like "winners" in this country, although I always bristle at the use of sports analogies in the news -- gentlemen, this is not a game!

    I think it was in that Fallows story that he noted how CNN called each republican primary debater out onto the stage as if it were a prize fight. Very weird when you think about it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. James FergusonOctober 6, 2012 at 5:22 PM

    ... as is the whole debate structure. What I like about European politics is that the leaders have to field tough questions, and are pressed to answer them. The debates, like the notorious interviews, are really nothing more than press opportunities. Very little is said. It just comes down to how well one or another presents himself or herself, and hopefully not forget their prepackaged lines.

    ReplyDelete
  3. avrdsOctober 6, 2012 at 5:34 PM

    Exactly! Which is why Romney did so well in the first debate. Looking forward to the next ones to see if any of that dynamic changes.

    As an aside, I arrived in London to live the first time in the fall and the labor party was having its meeting in Brighton. I was amazed at how they really addressed and argued about issues (and called each other comrade which I had never heard before), and that it was broadcast on BBC.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
229 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more

The Searchers

By
You are invited to join us in a discussion of  The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl.  The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics'  Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts.  The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories.  The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...
123 comments
Read more