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[RichM]

1. Things like this show 2 aspects of the diseased state of US society -

first, the phenomenon that you point out. Second, the fact that THIS type of riot probably gets as much media attention as 12 million protestors marching worldwide against an unjust US war.

[PROGRESSIVE1]

2. I thought that picture was the "Join Arnold" rally...

where they assaulted the nuns!

:eyes:

[Iverson]

3. notice the difference

Drunken frat boy riots get a free pass up to a point.

""We had to use force only and when the situation was totally out of control," Franklin said, adding that police donned riot gear only after the crowds got out of hand and fires had been set in the street."

If, on the other hand, you attend a lefty march and rally, police are out in riot gear from minute one, and sometimes initiate violence. I guess criticizing the WTO is more dangerous, huh?

[SpaceCatMeetsMars]

6. Exactly. I used to live right above a street in Pittsburgh where

these sports riots and celebrations went on all the time. There was rampant law-breaking, but the police never even seemed to care. Then when I read reports from Pittsburgh about protests last spring (I no longer live there) and how the police were dogging them and arresting them for getting offf the sidewalk, I couldn't believe it was the same police force!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. It just shows how thoroughly

pop culture has dumbed people down.

A few months ago, someone posted a thread about behind the scenes discussions at one of the networks in which network executives talked about deliberate efforts to encourage people to believe that sports were really, vitally, earthshakingly, life-or-death important.

Note the attention paid to high school and college athletes and the time that they devote to their sports. Now compare it to the attention that the media pay to high school and college academic achievers.

As a former college instructor, I also know that if a teacher ever made the kinds of demands that athletic coaches make, the students would contact Amnesty International to complain about cruel treatment. Coaches are to be obeyed unquestioningly; teachers are to be treated as hired help who must please the students, not work them too hard, and give them high grades.

The football coach at the typical college is paid more than any professor, and the athletic department often has better facilties than the academic departments.

The whole purpose is to keep us distracted from what's really going on, to make sure that students are too wrapped up in their athletic activities to give more than token attention to their studies or to talk about what's going on in the world, why student athletes are held up as heroes, while the science fair winners or the Putnam Math Prize winners are treated as geeks if they get any mentions at all. That's why fundamentalist Christians are usually huge boosters of sports--if your leisure hours are consumed with sports practice, you don't have time or emotional energy to think.

(Footnote: In the nineteenth century, schools promoted rigorous sports training for boys on the theory that they would then be so tired at the end of the day they would go right to sleep instead of masturbating. I'm not making this up.)

That's why we have a bazillion sports channels on TV, probably most of them watched by people who couldn't walk a mile without keeling over. That's why students who wouldn't notice if the U.S. became an outright military dictatorship start rioting if their team loses.

If Marx were writing today, he's say, "Sports are the opiate of the peole."

[RichM]

5. Reflecting on all these very accurate observations, one could add

that it's no mystery how Arnold may well be 'elected' governor of California tomorrow. It's part of the exact same cultural process, after all.