Tom Fallon <noland1@gwi.net> wrote:
Boycott the Superbowl! But, if you do boycott the Superbowl, what literary event will you attend next Sunday?
Tom Fallon / Webmaster
Rumford Falls, Maine
http://www.maineliterature.org
http://calendar.yahoo.com/aopoetry
http://home.gwi.net/tomfallon
Tom,
Why the f#*k should anybody boycott the Superbowl?
Lew
Lew,
What do you think about men playing a kids' game - with such ferocity? What do you think about the Babbitts who have changed the game from what it is supposed to be? Mammon be damned!
Tom
Tom,
I grew up a Baptist minister's son. As a result, I abominate sermons and people who are holier-than-me. Who do you think you are? Your recent blog-type pronouncements from your artist's pulpit are at best annoying and at worst reprehensible. If you wish to push your own poetry, good enough; if you wish to proselytize for the arts, that's fine, but if you intend to attack other people's pleasures and penchants for no other reason than that you think everybody ought to think and act the way you do, that makes you a demagogue.
Maine is a hockey state. I dislike hockey because I can't follow the puck, but I love football because I played it in school as a kid and I enjoy ritual combat. Do I use my blog to tell everyone they ought to boycott the Stanley Cup game and watch the Superbowl instead? I don't. I watch the Superbowl one Sunday a year, and the rest of the year I labor in the vineyards of literature because that's what I've done my whole life.
You need to get your roles straight. If you're a poet, be one; if you're a popularizer of the arts, okay. But if you think you're a censor, join the Religious Right and continue to speak ex cathedra to the rest of the intolerant jerks in an otherwise free country.
Lew
Lew -
I wasn't politically correct, eh? Now that makes me happy!TomNo, you weren't tolerant of other people; i.e., thosebourgeois "Babbitts" you mentioned. (I haven't heard that word in a long time. I made a pun aboutVictor Mature to a young person a while back. AllI got in return was a blank stare. We've gotten old, Tom.)LewLew,
It would shock many of my friends to hear it but I agree with your objection to Mr. Fallon's request to boycott the Superbowl. There are more grounds on which to object than just censorship, however, and I pity the learned man who cannot see in sports the beauty and erudition to be gleaned.
Once a civilization gets past providing the basic needs of nourishment, shelter and clothing, arts and play are the rewards we reap, and they are on a par. If you want to argue about which one is more important, you're splitting very fine hairs from the same head. If you want to boycott sports and do something better, join the Peace Corps, and teach Africans better farming. But try to ignore the fact that at the end of the day some of them will just as soon kick a ball around as sit round a fire and tell stories.
If Earth has music for those who listen, it can be found as much in sports as in the arts. I see beauty in a flawlessly executed forward pass, the tenacity and concentration of a pitcher executing a shutout, or the endurance of a marathon runner just as I do in verse, cinema, fiction - and my heart yearns for that achievement equally, longs for such satisfaction and attainment. If great literature ancient and contemporary can teach us morals by proxy, then so can the many characters and stories in the sports world. I empathize with the vicissitudes of various sportsmen as much as I do for characters in the greatest stories ever told - and perhaps more so because these people are real and in my time.
I owe much to my wife - a rabid Steelers fan - for teaching me these things, and I warn anyone to spar cautiously with her on this or any topic, including the arts.
Paul Austin
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