A Cynical Era

We are living in a cynical era. Nobody believes in hope anymore, or the American dream, except old people. I wonder, has it always been only old people who believe in the American dream? Is the whole thing based on nostalgia? Is the idea of a bushy-eyed 18-year-old being sent off by his extended family to fight in some extremely just war because he believes in the Stars and Stripes Forever a myth? Was there ever such a thing as food rationing, fireside chats with the President, 4th of July parades and stickball in the street? Obviously life was never like Leave It To Beaver but was it, at least, ever like The Sandlot? Or are these things just lies and bizarre fantasies passed down from generation to generation? I'm tempted to believe that since the 80's are now being propped up as a time of great goodwill and apple pie and so on rather than a time of gas gouging and Noriega and giant multinational corporations sucking the life out that fireside chat bullshit. I talk like this, and I'm a capitalist! I (heart) Giant Multinational Corportations and I loath Fireside Chats, but I still act with angst about the 80's. As I said, we live in a cynical era.

I spoke earlier about Jerry Rubin, though, and Didier Drogba. So there must be some line in the sand that I draw regarding greed. I think $$$ is super-duper and I applaud the pursuit of it, but there is something disgusting and perverse about ex or current revolutionaries parading around with their wallets bulging. I can't put my finger on it, but I can say quite surely that Che Guevara was a lot more Rockefeller than Zapata, and if that wasn't true when the butcher was alive, it is certainly true now. Felicitaciones, Castro, you pig. You've managed to profit wildly on the idea that $$$ is evil. Lived the American Dream, in that sense. But why is Castro or Che a great hero and someone like George Steinbrenner or Roman Abramovich is a great villain? Or that Thai slaughter fiend who bought Man City this year? He's a bad guy, I'm pretty sure. If the Mullahs in the Taliban had come with a load of cash and bought up Coventry City, would we as a people have allowed that? In the name of tolerance and open-mindedness? Even if they'd made the players wear veils? And would that be okay? I wonder.

The question of capitalism v. socialism, especially as it pertains to sports, is a curious and interesting one. One of the only things you could legitimately claim improved under Castro's regime is the performance of Cuba in international athletic competition. Their baseball team is as good as any in the world, including the US and Japan, and they regularly pump out boxers and swimmers and runners that sweep up at the Olympics and Pan American Games and so on. Cynics would point to how well Soviet athletes performed as compared to their Russian counterparts and say, well, every athlete in Cuba is an amateur so it's not really a level playing field. The Cubans would say it dilutes the purity of sport if athletes are performing for lust and avarice rather than the Love Of The Game. And, as much as our Democratic sensibilities are offended by this, we kind of agree, don't we? As a people? We yearn for the days (which, incidentally, never happened) when people played solely because they love the game and not because it was possible to make loads of cash. We look at greed-heads like Alex Rodriguez and Kobe Bryant and we hate them and say they destroy the innocence we're trying to recapture by following their games. We loath the Yankees and Chelsea for buying championships. We mourn the collapse of Shoeless Joe (who was playing in that love-of-the-game era, but nevermind that) and Pete Rose to the powers of personal gain, and especially its influence when your alternative is chivalry.

According to the company line, there would never be a Shoeless Joe or Pete Rose in Cuban baseball because there's no opportunity for Profit. In reality, Livan and Orlando Hernandez and Jose Contreras are Cuba's Pete Rose. Because, you see, what our innocence means to them is almost absolutely nothing. And it shouldn't. It shouldn't mean anything to El Duque if I am offended by his desire to make his living while he lives. Because the truth is, love of the game or no, El Duque was confronted with a clear choice. Continue to live in Cuba, play for the love of the game, viva la revolución, blah blah blah and also die on a filthy, poverty-stricken island with no hope for making a better life for his family. Or, he could abandon mantras and abstractions like "innocence" and "purity" and opt for some of the real comforts of life by becoming a multi-millionaire almost instantly. Realize, the professional life of an athlete is cruelly short. And his own life is much more important than your idea of purity. So, this is why I always support Cuban refugee athletes. I think they're doing the Right Thing.

However, this doesn't excuse the likes of Drogba and I'm sure my reasoning is intellectually unsound. If someone in the inner city, say, brings it on themselves to get an education and starts a business or something, we applaud it. If the same person makes the same $$$ in gangs or crime syndicates, then they're a shame and a Bad Person. To me, signing with Chelsea even if you didn't want to (as Drogba claims to have done in a recent interview, even saying he hoped he failed his physical so the deal wouldn't go through) is about the same as hustling to feed your family. So, hell, we can be pro-$$$ and anti-corruption, can't we?

This was well too scattered to be a proper essay on the subject and well too organized to belong here. I'll do better next time! Suerte.