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Katha Pollitt and Andrew Sullivan

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Headline

By Andrew Sullivan
Posted Tuesday, April 21, 1998, at 4:43 PM ET

Katha,

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Oh, God. We're agreeing again. Since when was sport a crucial civic virtue?? Even egghead effete sheets like the New York Times dedicate a whole section most days to it, as if it meant anything real or interesting, or wasn't a lowest common denominator entertainment. You're right about stadiums as well. DC just shelled out a fortune for a new MCI stadium downtown, and a new Redskins stadium, and every idiotic newsman and woman is required to nod knowingly when the sports guy makes some obscure reference to some impenetrable football play, and anyone like me who finds the entire exercise faintly ridiculous is regarded as unpatriotic and unmanly. IF DC spent an ounce of the mental energy it expends on sports on education then the city might be livable once again. And the only people more boring than sports stars are movie actors.
My own theory is that sports are one of the very few ways that most heterosexual (and some homosexual) men can communicate with each other about anything other than the weather. They cannot talk about their feelings; and they cannot really hang out in groups of three or less (someone might think they're gay); and women confuse and frustrate them. So ... how about those Skins? Yes, there are some aspects to sports that are beautiful and admirable; and baseball in this regard is on a different plane than football; and soccer is even more engaging. (I won't bore you with an appreciation of a five-day cricket match). But in general, these are definitely what Mr. Mill would have called lower pleasures. And we need to do a better job of keeping them in their place.
On a more troubling level, the sports fetish is also a crude way of defining masculinity down. I went to a high school (all male, and not one of those fee-paying buggery clinics from Masterpiece Theatre) where the rugby team were gods. But they weren't the only male role models. Britain still had a place for the masculine scholar, or debater, or scientist. America seems to me to have allowed for these other pursuits but to have avoided seeing them as part of being male. (It's bound up, at some level, with a fear of homosexuality, I suppose.) This means that the minute the american male has a crisis of masculinity, he looks to Brett Favre or Reggie White for guidance. This is extremely troubling.
But are you as interested in the business pages as I am?

best
Andrew

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