Sports offers teachable insights into the leftist mindset, and even cursory observations verify that everything is political with these folks. This is unavoidable, I suppose, when your power is derived from electoral or public relation successes of the grievance industry.
Thus, we know for sure liberals could not simply enjoy Monday’s BCS Title Game the way normal folks did. Having been dealt one setback after another in their quest to force the NFL’s Washington Redskins to change their moniker, one of the nations leading liberal sports journalists (aren’t they all?) has made it official: Florida State is now the cause du jour.
Dave Zirin is the official sports writer for one of the country’s kookiest publications, The Nation. I was surprised to find out that this rag required a sports writer, given that the liberal solution to sport is to not keep score. Nonetheless, a little research confirms that Zirin is actually somewhat of a rabble-rousing celeb among the sporting Marxist do-gooders. It also confirms that this is quite the little cottage industry. I guess Keith Olbermann left a void when he left the toy department for MSNBC.
And ‘everything being political’ certainly includes Monday night’s BCS Title game, about which Zirin’s headline screams “The Florida State Seminoles: The Champions of Racist Mascots.” But if you think Zirin’s beef stops with the supposedly racist mascot, think again. He merely uses this as a launching point for a kind of deranged commie sports manifesto, hitting all the liberal hot buttons.
He starts the piece in full Occupy Wall Street fashion by calling the game “the VizioDow Chemical/Blackwater/Vivid Video BCS National Championship,” which left me wondering how the hell he left Halliburton and Bain Capital out of the title. But seriously, Blackwater?? Even for the politically obsessed, that’s obscure. Zirin then went out of his way to describe FSU followers as “overwhelmingly Caucasian fans with feathers in their hair.” There’s no word whether his economic heroine, Elizabeth Warren, was among those Caucasians, let alone whether the ‘Nole’s fans had those classic native cheek bones or not.
He then opines that “their passions were stirred into a frenzy by a white person, face smeared with war paint, dressed as the legendary chief Osceola riding out on a horse.” Funny, I thought the passions were stirred by being in the title game, and perhaps some pre game lubrication, but what do I know? I’m not a liberal sports journalist. And by the way, is the guy on the horse really white? Who cares? Apparently Zirin does, calling the spectacle “mass interactive minstrelsy.” Not being obsessed with the topic, I didn’t even know minstrelsy was a proper form of minstrel. It is, and thus depends on the rider being white under the war paint in this context.
Thank goodness the “overwhelmingly Caucasian” staffers at The Nation, not to mention the Huffington Post, are there to remind us. (Zirin also writes for HuffPo. Of course.)
And it’s a good thing those same Caucasians are brilliant enough to pass judgment on the Florida Seminole Tribal Council’s agreement with Florida State University that endorses the use of Seminole as a mascot. Zirin complains with immense irony he fails to see that “the majority of Seminoles don’t even live in Florida. They live in Oklahoma, one of the fruits of the Seminole Wars, the Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears. These Oklahoma Seminoles – who, remember, are the majority – oppose the name.”
If I’m reading this right, the Okie Seminoles, who perhaps root for the Oklahoma Sooners, are upset about the name. Please tell me if the use of “Sooner” – who we all know were “overwhelmingly Caucausian” – is a good thing, how is the use of Seminole insulting? Moreover, it’s obvious that the very existence of the conservative state of Oklahoma, a fruit of the Seminole wars, irks Zirin. Damned red state full of rednecks and white people. He’s also consumed with the majority of Seminoles not having a voice on FSU’s mascot, and yet remains solidly behind Obama Care. Go figure.
He goes on in the interminable screed to complain about money’s influence on the whole process, rants about Nelson Mandela and Muhammad Ali mouse pads and souvenir sales and the like, and he is generally miserable about the whole thing. Which is, of course, the natural state for liberals who are employed in the grievance industry. As for me, I thoroughly enjoyed the thrilling game. I’m glad Vizio sponsored it, so I could watch it. I like the Tomahawk Chop, or whatever FSU calls it – and have since seeing it firsthand in the early 80’s. I thought the Auburn fans were awesome too. It’s cool that the vocally Christian Tim Tebow almost predicted the score on the nose!
Then again, what do I know? I’m just an overwhelmingly Caucasian conservative, too stupid to know when I should be offended.
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