Sports & Politics
Reported by Nancy - August 5, 2004 -
I'm not a sports fan, so I was unaware of this story until a friend e-mailed me Les Carpenter's sports column in the Seattle Times on 8/2/04.
Carpenter reports that the WNBA is shutting down in order to get ready for the Olympics, headlining it as WNBA makes a patriotic choice & then goes on to make a political analysis:
What's a flag worth these days, anyway? In a time when nationalism has become a contrived concept, defined by how red, white and blue a cable news ticker can roll or how straight you stand for "God Bless America" in the seventh-inning stretch, here comes a true act of patriotic sacrifice. The WNBA shut itself down for a month last night.
Wouldn't you think the psychopatriots would be all over this? Curiously, while the shutdown itself was widely reported on sports pages & sports broadcasts, the news media haven't picked up on this -- a perfect opportunity to indulge in some feel-good flag-waving. Anyone care to speculate on why?
