ACCORDING TO BILL MAHER, football is socialist, baseball is not:Because football is built on an economic model of fairness and opportunity, and baseball is built on a model where the rich almost always win and the poor usually have no chance. The World Series is like Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. You have to be a rich bitch just to play. The Super Bowl is like Tila Tequila. Anyone can get in.
So, you kind of have to laugh - the same angry white males who hate Obama because he's "redistributing wealth" just love football, a sport that succeeds economically because it does exactly that.
I wonder if Mahr was inspired by this - which was also performed on the very first Saturday Night Live.
ReplyDeleteI've always wondered about that. Being from the UK I've noticed that N American sports are a kind of welfare system for owners and people who could not survive anywhere else but in sports.
ReplyDeleteThere is no promotion/demotion. Teams rarely fold and new ones enter. Coaches who are fired enter the corporate welfare system provided by television until the merry-go-around spins and he is re-hired.
There are limits to how much a team can spend on players and how much they can pay them and if you shit the bed then you can pick the best new player in the draft to try and right the balance.
Once you retire then the media welfare system is ready to help out the more photogenic once more. If that is not enough then other forms of welfare are readily available to ex-pros.
Then you have play-offs where the 8th place team gets another chance to win the trophy. And where after a season of hard work coming first means Dick.
Compare that with British football (soccer). Buy what you can afford. If you are first you are the champions. If you are last, then go away until you are good enough and we'll give someone else a chance in the meantime. Yesterdays results mean nothing and no club is too big to fail.
We may like our healthcare inclusive and available to all, but our sports are viscerally bloody.