Light On Dark Water

Derb on Soccer

I am linking to this anti-soccer rant from alienated Englishman (and all-around curmudgeon) John Derbyshire because I think it’s funny, not because I agree with it (my view is here, in case you missed it—and care). Sample:

The very inconclusiveness of soccer is, I suspect, what has made it the pet sport of the repulsive bobos—David Brooks’ “bourgeois bohemians.”… In their soft, money-addled minds, these deluded wretches associate soccer with things “civilized” and European: with French wines and Danish pastries, with tiny, fuel-efficient cars and eighteen different varieties of coffee, with universal health care and the prohibition of handguns. How wrong-headed is all this? One hardly knows where to begin.

In fact, it seems to me that attention paid to the World Cup in the US by non-bobos is noticeably higher than at the last go-round. And I’m glad we won this morning (USA 1, Algeria 0).

Maclin Horton
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11 responses to “Derb on Soccer”

  1. Francesca

    No offense to the USA, but I was a little sorry Slovenia didn’t make it into the second group (which would have happened if the USA had not scored). Not at all on anti-American grounds, but just as supporting underdogs, in an English sort of way. I back little countries.

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  2. Mac

    England had an opportunity to lose to Slovenia, didn’t they? So not our fault…:-)
    Now that you mention it, I suppose the rest of the world might be just as happy if we stay on the margins of this sport. There are quite a few of us, and we tend to go at sports in a fanatical way.

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  3. Francesca

    I find Derb’s article odd, as coming from an Englishman. In America, it might be bourgeoise (can’t spell it) Bohos who take up a liking for (European) football because it makes them different from normal Americans, but in England and Scotland, just about anyone might or might not like football. I suppose you get a similar tendency, of intellectuals pretending to like football to seem ‘of the people’, but it is by no means universal. I was at an exam board meeting in Cambridge last Friday and said at the lunch, rather mournfully, ‘I’m flying back at 7 pm and will miss England play Algeria’, to which a very well known Church historian replied, ‘England play who?’ He was genuinely shocked that I was following the world cup. I tried to explain that all I ever follow is the world cup, as a sort of four yearly ritual, but I clearly fell in his estimation until I remarked that my mother had thought the Mexicans or some such had played well the day before – he thought, ‘she was brought up in a household which watches football’. Still, the England flag has been flying at No 10 Downing Street, and I doubt if that would have been the case 30 years ago – though it is often said that Harold Wilson won the election on a surge of joy after we won the cup in 1966 (I think it was).

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  4. Mac

    That’s part of his point–looking down on it as a lower-class thug-ridden entertainment. Like your historian. Now, as a transplant to the USA, he can indulge his lifelong dislike of the game and its fans AND make sport of American liberals who think it’s a genteel affair.

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  5. Mac

    Aussies have the right idea about vuvuzelas.

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  6. Louise

    Oz is out. Bummer.
    Worst of all – we have now (today) our “first woman PM.” Whoop-di-do. Never mind that she’s pro-abortion and belongs to a party that does not normally permit its members to vote according to conscience. This is a bad day for women in Oz. And a worse one for “unwanted” females in the womb.
    Bad bad bad…
    “Put not your trust in princesses neither…”

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  7. Louise

    Francesca, on the positive side of things, my beloved husband is home. He was in Scotland for almost 3 weeks. He brought home a copy of the Scottish Catholic Observer! Naturally, I thought of you…
    🙂

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  8. Mac

    “Put not your trust in princesses neither…”
    heh. That would make a good sign for an anti-Hillary rally, if she ever runs for prez again. I wouldn’t blame people for using it on Sarah Palin, either, though I like her better. Don’t especially want to see either of them in the Oval Office.

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  9. Mac

    Yet more on the game’s increasing popularity in the US:
    http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/06/23/rushin.world.cup.mania/index.html
    I don’t know if “World Cup Fever” is quite justified, but there certainly seems to be more interest this time.

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  10. Paul

    I saw the “highlights” of the Netherlands-Cameroon match after the news last night, and it almost made me wish I’d watched the whole thing.

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  11. Mac

    I’m afraid I didn’t pay any attention to that one. Well, to be honest, I haven’t paid any attention to any games outside the group the USA is in (aside from reading a bit about the French soap opera).

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