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.

Politics and Baseball will have to Wait

Because, at the risk of sending the whole thing spinning into a spiral of hellish, hubris-biting hexation, Barcelona are currently sending Rangers a strong message about who is who in Europe. I don't necessarily agree with Leo Messi that Rangers played anti-football in their first match in the Champions League, because if I was Rangers and I was welcoming the Catalan attack machine into my home, I would probably forget all about offense and hunker down in pursuit of a 0-0 tie myself. Because the strike force of Messi, Thierry Henry and Ronaldinho is as dangerous a weapon as has ever been unleashed in the world of club football (I would even say it is better than the Argentinian trio of Messi, Carlos Tevez and Hernan Crespo but maybe not quite on par with the Brazilian threesome of Ronaldinho, Robinho and Kaka) and the only reasonable thing for a B-list, sectarian, blood-thirsty, drunken Scottish clusterfuck club like Rangers to do is dig into the trenches, put everybody but Cousin in the box and hack away at the knees of the glorious invading forces. Sure, they did what they had to do.

But, when they come to the Nou Camp, they can forget all about defending themselves because it is impossible. Also-rans like Rangers have no choice but to stand gawking at the majesty of the Barcelona kingdom and just enjoy the sights and sounds of the thing and hope that Stuttgart beats Lyon. (They probably won't. They're down 3-1 right now.) So, Henry sent a clear message in the 6th minute and that message is, "Fool me once, blah blah blah, fuck you Rangers." That Messi, the lightning fast 20-year-old, with his anti-anti-football would slot one in right before the half is just about perfect, in terms of demonstrating that while Rangers may have won the battle at Ibrox, they never had any chance of winning the war and they never will.

I would say Barca fans are kind of spoiled, since Henry and Ronaldinho have both been the target of some extremely unjust speculation and hearsay this year, but we deserve to be because rooting for Barcelona is rooting for everything good in the world. Someone has to stand up to the fascist influence of Real Madrid, and counteract the juggernauts of the world with some beautiful 40 yard passes and a shirt that is sponsored by UNICEF instead of a phone company or somebody. Not that Barca don't have $$$, but you have to, and they spend it on players who mean something revolutionary, instead of players who make the cover of Four Four Two. The truly depressing thing is when Barca-style players sign with Madrid, because even good and radical freedom fighters sometimes sell out for the safety and comfort of Big Business. Just look at Jerry Rubin. Or Didier Drogba. This summer, when all the talk was of the golden-boy Kaka moving to Madrid, it couldn't have happened for the same reason the Penguin can't beat Batman, except for dramatic effect. Kaka may be playing for the Mafia at AC Milan, but that's a long way from playing for Franco and his Fascists in Madrid in terms of amorality.

Anyway, loving Barcelona is the same as loving beauty and truth (all ye need to know) and so when some crossbow-firing, vitriolic hate machine like Rangers engages in savagery to keep the good things of the world from victory, we know that's Not Right. And, sometimes the cynics among us believe that things that are Not Right happen all the time and that's just the way of things, but other times, Barcelona gets their revenge by popping in 2 against the supposedly impenetrable Rangers defense before the half, and then maybe there's reason for hope.

I don't necessarily mean that Barcelona winning today means we're entering a golden age of an Obama/Paul ticket winning the white house, or an eradication of sectarianism worldwide, but it's a start. Of course, the game's not over, and the Champions League is a long and grueling fight that still has oligarchs and fascists and mafiosos and gangsters and thieves alive and well, so, like El Pipila says, Aún hay otras Alhóndigas por incendiar. Look it up.