CSotD: It’s not a “sports” analogy if it’s not about a real sport
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I will confess that Jimmy Margulies's cartoon is serving as a backdrop today to a thought that knocked me out of my recliner last night, rather than a direct result of his work.
However, it's a good graphic tie-in, because you can pick at Trump for firing Comey, for nepotism, for monetizing the presidency, for appointing incompetents, even for being under the sway of a foreign government, but the fact is, his supporters love him and will stick by him.
Until you address that, you're simply preaching to the choir, and the choir didn't vote for him in the first place.
Margulies addresses the part nobody seems to have been able to figure out: How can he be such a transparent fabulist, liar and buffoon without blow-back from the people to whom he has been telling these ridiculous tall tales?
(I know there are people who get upset with sports analogies, but please hang in, because this is not an analogy. It's a parallel event in the real world.)
Last night, I stumbled across this ESPN documentary on the XFL, a short-lived experiment in competing with the NFL that went horribly awry.
If you don't like sports, just check out this promo and understand that it was even more appalling for people who like football.
It had nothing to do with Donald Trump, who had destroyed a much more credible rival football league by persuading other owners to take outrageous, foolish, short-sighted risks. A different rant, a different ESPN documentary.
This more ludicrous failure was based on a shotgun marriage between football, a sport, and professional wrestling, a form of entertainment based on fakery.
The XFL had only one season, in 2001, and I remember fans hoping that these guys would put together a league that would provide football in the off-season.
It wouldn't be NFL calibre, but, like minor league baseball, as long as it was competitive, the specific skill levels wouldn't be that important.
It was a disaster for a couple of reasons.
First of all, they rushed it into existence and didn't even have teams until just before the season started.
For those who don't understand football, imagine mounting, on short notice, a production of a challenging ballet with an entire corps most of whom are straight out of dance school, others of whom have been fired by other dance companies, and none of whom have ever danced with each other or even met the director.
Possible? Sure.
Likely? Not likely.
Several of the players later had careers in real football, but this was in no way real football.
And it wouldn't have worked even with better preparation and training, because the marriage of sport and entertainment meant new rules, most of which harkened back to the days when football nearly ended because of the serious injuries involved, and some of which included brand-new ways to damage the players.
All of which Vince McMahon hyped as making football more macho and getting the sissies out of the game.
As Bob Costas points out in the documentary, this went in the opposite direction of the emerging research on brain injuries in the sport, but, even without that factor, you can't play the sport if you can't keep players healthy and on the field.
McMahon's response to crappy football and serious injuries? Emphasize the sexy cheerleaders and bring in celebrities from the world of wrestling to bellow on the sidelines and bloviate from the booth and create the same dumbass culture that made pro wrestling successful.
Now, this is the common question about pro wrestling:
Does the audience know it's fake?
And, if you press most wrestling fans, they may differ on how much scripting they believe goes into a bout, but they know that the ring floor is set up to minimize injuries, that being hit with a folding chair is not serious, and that wrestlers, like stuntmen, have ways of making the action seem more deadly than it actually is.
And it would be fine if they said, "Yes, I know it's fake, but I enjoy the pagaentry and the buffoonery and the stunts."
After all, when Jesse Ventura was elected governor of Minnesota, his entire wrestling (and XFL announcing) career was based on horseshit. But he knew that.
What is more important is that he knew it was an act, not his actual core self. So he put away the frilly boas, focused on reality and turned out to be a pretty good governor, given his lack of experience.
Believing in your own horseshit was the XFL's critical error.
While it was easy to create wrestling around a fake structure of horseshit and bright lights, when you tried to reverse the process and impose horseshit and bright lights on an existing, legitimate sport, the result was injured players and lousy football.
And although ratings for the XFL had started with a huge opening burst, they quickly tanked as sports fans smelled the horseshit and turned away.
So, as the documentary showed screaming fans, crotch-shots of cheerleaders and the overblown bellowing of McMahon, Ventura and other wrestling types, the real question hit me.
It's not "Does the audience know it's fake?" but
Do they know the difference between sports and entertainment?
which is to say,
Do they understand the nature of competition in the real world?
Do wrestling fans really think the same fakery in pro-wrestling is brought into baseball, football and basketball?
And do they bring that steadfast, delusional world view to politics?
Do they realize that "They all do it" does not reveal insight, but a foolish lack of discernment?
Do they know that, while talent, preparation and luck all matter, reality is not fixed?
The XFL proved that, when you try to play a real sport with horseshit rules, it doesn't work. It isn't sports, it isn't entertaining and people get injured.
And maybe if we'd made Jesse Ventura president, we'd be in better shape, because Jesse knew where the horseshit began and ended, even if his fans didn't.
And never, ever would.
I seriously doubt the current officeholder knows that there is a line at all, much less where it is drawn.
I wish I were joking.
Ah, well, Happy Mothers Day
(Pat Byrnes, the New Yorker)
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