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SOUL_SO_DEAD
December 3, 2005
Imagine the plight of a kid growing up in the
suburbs of New York, getting interested in the
World Series in spite of himself, because the
Yankees are playing that summer and they're the
New York team, and they're the best.
Try and get inside the glow of pride at the
notion that your home town is home town
to one of the best baseball teams ever.
Then, as time goes on, this kid gets to
watch players get traded around...
the guy you were rooting against last year may
be on Your Team this year; the guy you were
rooting for may be one of the Hated Enemy now.
What were you being loyal to, exactly?
The team is clearly not homegrown product
by any means, but rather people recruited
from all over... "The Yankees" then
is a vortex of money and fame, a self-
reinforcing knot tied long ago under
conditions much different...
Though for that matter, New York itself is
hardly a collection of Native New Yorkers,
in fact the central myth of New York City
involves incorporating immigrants from
all over the planet.
So, the True New Yorker then, is someone
who rises above concerns about geographic
origins, and learns to live and work with
people of diverse backgrounds?
But then: why enthuse about a New York team
at all? Isn't that stunningly parochial?
Why not some other team?
Wouldn't you be a fan of
any team that --
That does what? That plays well?
So you root for whoever you think
is going to win? If "your team"
starts to slip, would you then
switch "loyalties" to another team?
You pick favorite artists because you like
the art they produce... and you might very
well ignore a favorite artist after you
thought they were past their prime.
You pick favorite people because of, what,
some perception of inner quality? Or is it
just some expectation that they're going to RANDY
do something for you?
(Certainly you'd think about dropping
a friend pretty quickly if they
starting doing more to you than for you.)
So: why be loyal to New York at all?
If you look closely at New York, the culture
seems very much more borrowed than invented...
New York is unique among American cities And arguably,
in its propensity to lift ideas from both San Francisco
Europe and the West Coast. is what it is
because it's
willing to lift
The true hipster is a True ideas from
New Yorker only as long as Asia and
New York remains true to Latin America
itself. as well as
New York.
And similarly, for wider
geographic groupings?
Right or wrong?
When your country is wrong,
it may be your duty to fix it.
When you despair at fixing it,
it may be your duty to leave it,
to keep the original dream
alive elsewhere.
It's so easy to get
locked into a group
identity almost by
accident.
For me the pull of a baseball
team loyalty is a ridiculously
weak thing (I may have watched
a half-dozen baseball games in
the last decade...). What if
I'd let it go farther than that?
I have a nephew with a Yankees logo
tattooed on his body (done up in I'm more prone to
tribal 80s style)... he's got the obsessions about musical
idea that he and the Yankees have taste: the idea that it's
something to do with each other, and important to support "my
that idea is wedged so deeply in his scene", to listen only to
consciousness, it's unlikely he's the genre that my
ever going to recover. particular version of the
in-crowd like to listen to.
One of the more disturbing things
about the current political scene is DISCO_SUCKS
the way many people (and practically
all professional pundits) seem to base
their opinions on tribal loyalties.
My party right or wrong,
and devil take the country.
Then there's the
ever popular obsessions
with "race", eh?
FALSE_CENTER
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