Rant about "the new face of Russia, efficient and friendly and open to the world"

 

I am not quite sure whether to laugh or cry.  It is all just so absurdly, cynically, poetic.

I felt a tiny tinge of vindication with all the brou-ha-ha preceding the Sochi Olympics, where it looked like finally the grand lie of “politics should not be mixed with sport” that had been perpetuated around the Beijing Games and the human rights violations that they were built upon was not very often voiced.  To the contrary, we heard all kinds of noises about gay rights, corruption and environmental degradation.  Us Westerners were eagerly wagging our fingers, and it seemed to work to some extent: Putin went on to release a host of political prisoners, including most famously the Pussy Riot performers Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina as well as Mikhail Khodorkovsky in the run up to the Games.  We could all slap ourselves on the back and focus on the sport.

The sports were as fascinating as ever, nobody can fault that.  However, I was mortified to find out how completely, utterly we forgot all about the moralistic posturing once the Games were on the way.  The corruption and environmental degradation had not gone anywhere, but instead of continuing to highlight this, the REAL cost of the extravaganza to the people most affected, Western media was unanimously gushing over how great the organisation was and how gleaming the brand-spanking new event venues.  Environmental activist Evgeny Vitishko was sentenced to 3-years in prison on trumped up charges and the indefatigable Pussy Riot were beaten and detained during the Games.  Did you notice?  If you noticed, did you care?  If you did, good on you, you were just about the only person in the whole world.

This is what the President of the International Olympic Committee Thomas Bach said at the closing ceremony; it pretty well sums up the general media feeling about the Games:

President Bach thanked Putin for his “personal commitment to the extraordinary success of these Olympic Winter Games”, as Putin watched on from the stands.

(…)

Bach said the 25,000 volunteers had shown the new face of Russia, efficient and friendly and open to the world, and described the Sochi Winter Olympics as “the Athletes’ Games”.

Earlier in his address, the IOC President urged global leaders to follow the Olympic society in displaying peace, tolerance and respect, which he described as sending a “powerful message” around the world.

You do not launch a military invasion of foreign territory on a day’s notice.  This means that while President Putin was lapping up the praise of the foreign media and politicians for his “personal commitment” to the “extraordinary success” of the greatest winter sports event of the world, one that apparently “display[ed] peace, tolerance and respect” and the “new face of Russia (…) open to the world”, he was preparing indeed to send a “powerful message around the world”, but not quite the one we thought was coming. 

Rant about a Particularly Hot Piece of Ass

My cousins A and P told me that they were watching the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest held a few months ago in Malmö, Sweden. (Hooray to great cultural traditions!)  Apparently in the Finnish broadcast one could send text messages to the production company and these would scroll along the bottom of the screen as the finalists were performing.  A and P noted that many of the comments were lewd and openly sexual, saying nothing about the songs, but focusing solely on the physical attributes of the artists.  Once they noticed this, they began following the comments and discovered that they related solely to the men – without exception.  Nobody made comments about the looks of the female artists (or at least none were published), many of whom were trying just as hard as the men (if not harder) to look sexy.

This is of course what I did at the end of my last post on football.  I made a very thinly veiled crass remark about the looks of professional male football players.  Had I been a man, and making a similar kind of a comment about, say, a female swimmer or gymnast, it would probably have come across as stupid and more than a little sexist.  But I will hazard a guess that that is not how it came across when I made it about men.

Why is that?  Is it not a double standard?  Why do women feel the need to make sexist remarks about men’s bodies, and why are these tolerated?

I gave this idea some thought, and while I don’t have any definite answers, my guess is that it is some kind of a reclaiming exercise.  “Reclaiming” is what black people have done in appropriating the previously used derogatory term “nigger” for their own use, just like women have done with “bitch”, handicapped people with “cripple” and gay men with “fruit” or “queen” – just to give a few obvious examples.  So what I think has happened with the whole objectification thing is that women have taken a practice formerly reserved for men and appropriated it for their own use.  While men are no longer permitted to do that with impunity (remember what recently happened to BBC’s John Inverdale and his blooper about Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli?), women are cheekily turning the tables and giving men a taste of their own medicine.  What we are in effect saying is “I don’t give a damn whether you have talent / brains / sense of humour – I just see you as a hot piece of ass and it is my right to objectify you in this way”.  

The fad will undoubtedly die down, but for now, I may just take advantage of it a few times before it is gone.  So all overpaid famous men beware: I couldn't care less about you, your skills, opinions or personality.  What I want to know is whether I am getting some eye candy or not.  

I'm sure all Wayne Rooneys of this world are quietly crying into their beers having learnt this harsh truth about my wishes and intentions. 

Rant about FIFA Law 12

As a light summer rant, I want to talk about football.

My own interest has mostly revolved around other sports, but football is relatively hard to avoid, especially when living in England, like I was from the late 1990s onwards.  So I tried to fit in.  I went to the pub to watch Premier League games, I read up on it, I picked a team I pretended to support (Liverpool, in case anyone’s interested).

Then came the 2002 World Cup.  I remember the game very well, although I can’t even recall who England was playing, which says something about how interesting it was.  But as I was confessing to my housemate that the action looked a bit boring and I couldn’t understand why they kept insisting bringing the ball up the left side every time, the commentator mentioned casually that it was a very hot day and the left side of the field was the only one in the shade. 

That was it for me. 

You see, I could just about put up with the fact that it was all fundamentally dull and not much was ever happening.  I could also put up with the annoying filming where these supposedly tough athletes went down screaming like a bunch of babies in situations where you could see they were hardly touched.*  I could even put up with the inevitable penalty shootouts where the goalie always went in the opposite direction to the shot and the only way not to get it in was to be so incompetent as to actually miss the 7.3m x 2.4m goal.  But I couldn’t put up with the fact that in the most important tournament in the world the English players’ primary interest was to stay in the shade.  Nope, couldn’t put up with that, even if it was a REALLY HOT DAY.

So for a long time I gave up on football.  Then I moved to France, and the French know how to watch sports, so I ended up being swept away by the exciting 2006 World Cup.  I haven’t looked back since.  The sport had taken a turn for the better and the Spanish domination that has installed itself in the last few years has been nothing but good.  The game nowadays is fast, the passes short and skilled, there are goals and penalties, fast runs and hard tackles.  There is still some cry-babying, but much less so, presumably because modern TV technology will swiftly reveal you for the idiot that you are if you do that. 

So it is all for the better.

Well ... ALMOST all.

What I would like to know is this:  Who on earth got the idea to ban the players from ripping off their shirt when they scored a goal???  There are so many more goals being scored now than there were 10-15 years ago.  This would mean so many more opportunities to see all that ... toned, ... ripped, ... jubilation.  *sigh* They were SO CLOSE to creating a truly crowd-friendly sport.

Being a true believer in democracy I suggest starting a petition on change.org for reversing the 2004 amendment to FIFA Law 12.  Who’s with me?

*I dare anyone to try THAT in an ice hockey game ...

Rant about the Last Closet

I would like to think of myself as someone reasonably attuned to unintended insults*, but somehow with hockey all of that was out the window.  Hockey natter is replete with homophobic “jokes” and casual sexism.  Yet I for a long time didn’t see them as such.  I would go along with it, making idiotic (and not even mildly funny) comments to members of the guys’ team about picking up the soap in the shower.  Or call someone failing a shot a “girl”.  Or ... the examples are simply too numerous to list.

I hang my head in shame.

But at least I’m in illustrious company!  The examples in this regard are also too numerous to list, but I’ll give just a few for tasters: A college basketball coach whose usual practice techniques included physically abusing players and calling them faggots and a professional baseball player writing a homophobic slur on his eye-black strips during a game.

When the atmosphere in professional team sports is what it is, it is no wonder that no athlete in such sports has come out as gay, like, ever.  In football (or soccer in American) one player came out decades ago and then committed suicide, and another one did so this year, but felt the need to end his career at only 25 years old as a result.  Football is not even the most macho of sports, so one can imagine how much worse it must be in basketball, rugby, baseball, American football and hockey of course.

Considering that the stereotypical gay guy is pretty athletic, how likely is it that there really never have been any gays playing any of these sports professionally?  Extremely unlikely.  But as long as idiots like me are making the atmosphere totally hostile for them, no wonder that they prefer to stay in the closet.  Many have probably also chosen not to pursue a career in the sport they love and excel at.

Enter my hero of the week, Baltimore Ravens linebacker and Superbowl winner Brendon Ayanbadejo.  Mr Ayanbadejo wrote a superb op-ed piece for USA Today shortly after the Superbowl, using the media attention to raise awareness about homophobia in professional team sports.  He said poignantly that “the sports world – my world – is the last closet in America” and encouraged athletes to be the rolemodels they could and should be and create a safe environment for gays in sport.  He likened our times to 1942 when Jackie Robinson broke the colour line and became the first black player in Major League Baseball.  We are still waiting for the “gay Jackie Robinson” in men’s professional team sports, according to Mr Ayanbadejo, but hopefully not for long.

So momentum is starting slowly to build.  Mr Ayanbadejo is a member of Athlete Ally, an organisation supporting gays in sport, and I was pleased to see Sean Avery, a former NHL goon, also on the Board of Directors.  In Europe, the professional football player Matt Jarvis has just become the third of his kind to pose for the gay magazine Attitude (after Freddie Ljungberg and the trailblazer (already in 2002) David Beckham) and Olivier Giroud did the same for Têtu last year.

Apart from creating a more positive attitude in general, and via publicity, there is something to be done at the grassroots level as well.  Just like in the armed forces, there appears to be an entirely mistaken fear in some sports circles that gays on a team would somehow threaten team cohesion or create awkward situations in the changing room.  Professional male athletes will find it hard to be told that they could learn something from their female counterparts, but this is one area where they really could.  Lesbians are obviously not an uncommon sight on the field, pitch or ice in women’s team sports and I can assure all boys on the basis of years of personal experience, that it is not a problem AT ALL.

*I try to mean them when I make them...