Why the Olympics and Other Sports Cause Conflict - Newsweek.com
Yay. Christopher Hitchens seems to dislike sport of all varieties just about as much I do. (Is dislike too strong a word? I certainly ignore 99.9% of it, and am very cynical that it is "character building" in any sense at all. Building stadiums is just about the biggest waste of government money ever invented. Now that I think about it, maybe I hate sport.)
Anyway, it's a fun read.
2 comments:
I still think there is merit in the sport replacing war theory. That it spills over from staged and sublimated violence to real violence from time to time does not refute that argument. It just shows that it is not a complete remedy for tribalism, which is hardly surprising. Christianity was meant to be the solution to tribalism and doesn't work that well all the time either.
Hitchens is a problem because he lacks the imagination to see problems from viewpoints other than from his own lofty vantage point. Having discovered the answer to everything he sneers at those who do not see it his way. That people gain pleasure from a sporting pursuit seems to be beyond his comprehension. That story had the same withering arrogance and condescension as his work on religion.
Yeah, but I find withering arrogance of sport to be funny, because sport is, well, ultimately unimportant and trivial. (Unlike religion.) :)
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