Fun Stuff > CHATTER

NUMBER ONE REASON WHY YOU SHOULDN'T VOTE FOR OBAMA!

<< < (7/33) > >>

KharBevNor:

Inlander:
One of the things I most cherish about my upbringing is the idea that sport is just one facet of life, not inferior or superior to any other, and as rewarding in its way as any other cultural pursuit. My dad, for instance, holds season tickets to both the local rugby team, and the Australian Chamber Orchestra - as do just about all of his friends. I don't know about elsewhere in the world, but in Australia I think of this mindset - or at least its prevalence in the community - as distinctly Canberran.

I like listening to music, and reading books, and hanging out on the internet, and going to see arty-farty foreign films - and I like watching and playing sport. I really can't for the life of me understand why so many people seem to think that's weird or strange, or that sport and "higher" cultural interests are mutually incompatible.

On the other hand, I agree with Khar that elite sports-people are generally paid way too much (even taking into account the relative brevity of their careers) and, in Australia at least, receive waaaay too big a slice of the tax pie. But I think that's a societal problem, rather than a problem intrinsic in sport itself.

Jace:
Number one reason why you should vote for obama:

McCain can't dance back.

KharBevNor:
Man, it ain't snootiness. I enjoy all sorts of low shit. It's just I have literally no understanding of the appeal, what it is supposed to be. How do I invest emotionally or intellectually in this shit? I do not know. I don't really want to. I have intellectual justifications for it but really it's just a deep level of utter non-comprehension of the whole thing. With that, I suppose, comes particular anger at the obscene amounts of money, time, space and effort that are wasted on professional sports (far and beyond what they might actually need. It makes me spit to see my country pouring billions of pounds into the ghastly nationalist pissing contest that is the Olympics in some vague hope of scoring a few meaningless victories. It infuriates me that no one seems to regard this as wrong when there are fucking people who can't afford to heat their homes or have enough to eat in the UK NOW. I don't see how anyone could possibly justify spending so much of the taxpayers money on an utterly trivial thing when such a situation exists.

0bsessions:
Tommy effectively nailed it. Love or hate them, sports are the single most universal "shooting the shit" topic that most people can get in on.

Rachel's dad is a staunch conservative Republican who is homophobic, a slight bit racist and all kinds of other shit that would effectively scare the piss out of me, but I'm able to actually sit in the dude's house with minimal discomfort because we can at least talk about sports.

My gramma and I constantly talk Red Sox. This is how we always connected growing up and to this day, she's one of my primary influences. And ask anyone who's met her, my grandmother is the absolute shit. Shane and Rachel can both vouch for this.

It's also one of the primary ways I've been able to connect with my brother in recent years. We're both incredibly different people and most of the things we have in common are more our failings than anything (Crude, tactless behavior, very stubborn, we hold terrible grudges), but we've always been able to connect on sports, at least.

I actually only ended up on this forum because of sports. Shane and I met through a Red Sox forum and he turned me on to this forum.

Sports is the tried and true uniter. There is not a single subject that ranges so many different classes, cultures and races. Until recently, the only really large group that you couldn't just strike up a conversation about sports with was women, and that's changed substantially over the past couple decades. Politics, video games, books, movies, music; none of them are quite so wide ranging and easily relateable as sports are.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page