Sudden reversal on sports and patriotism

The US military has made a determined effort to co-opt sports in America as a recruiting tool by exploiting patriotism. As Howard Bryant details in his book The Heritage, teams started having military salutes, singing of ‘God Bless America’, flyovers, recognition of troops, ‘surprise’ family reunions of returning troops, troops in VIP seats, etc. during games. While spectators and viewers were given the impression that these were done by the sports teams of their own volition as showing their patriotism, the reality was that the military was actually paying teams for all this. It was really crass, paid-for marketing.
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Getting rid of the intentional foul in basketball

The NBA basketball championship playoffs are currently underway. Even though the Cleveland home team the Cavaliers are the defending champions, I am not a basketball fan and have not watched any of the games so far. Part of the problem is that it is a very fast moving game (when it is not stopped for timeouts and the like which are the bane of American sports but allow for plenty of commercials) and I do not know the finer points of tactics and strategy to fully appreciate what is going on.
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Wahoo under fire

The racist image of Chief Wahoo that adorns all kinds of merchandise for the Cleveland Indians has long been a flashpoint for controversy. Despite the protests against it, the team has kept it on, citing that hoary old excuse of ‘tradition’ when the likely reason is that many fans love it and are willing to find excuses, however weak, for keeping it on, and the team owners don’t want to offend them. The fact that the Indians went to the championship finals last year has brought more national attention to the image, and the reviews were not good.
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The Curse of Wahoo strikes again

Yesterday, the Chicago Cubs beat the Cleveland Indians in the deciding seventh game of the World Series of baseball, an odd title for a contest in which the existence of only one Canadian team prevents the entire season from being an all-American affair. There had been hopes that the local baseball team would add to the national championship already won earlier in the year by the Cavaliers basketball team. In that case, Cleveland had fought back from a 3-1 deficit to win the last three games and the series but this time it was the reverse and the Indians blew a 3-1 lead. I think the reason is the Curse of Wahoo.
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Fighting ‘history and tradition’ racism

Those who try and change racist symbols and names like that of the Washington football team immediately come right up against that brick wall of the ‘It’s our tradition and as long as we think its not racist, it can’t be racist’ argument. I cannot afford to laugh at such ridiculous arguments because the people of Cleveland use that same argument to defend the racist Chief Wahoo baseball logo.
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The suddenly toxic confederate flag

In a previous post, I expressed some pessimism that southern states would disassociate themselves from the confederate flag, pointing out that the determination of fans and owners of the Cleveland Indians baseball team to retain their racist mascot in the face of opprobrium shows the strength that symbols have on people. If a baseball mascot could not be gotten rid of, what are the chances of doing so for a flag in a nation that fetishizes flags?
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What to do about the confederate flag

In the wake of the murders in Charleston, SC, even president Obama seems resigned to the fact that there seems to be little or no chance of even slightly reducing the ease with which lethal weapons are available to practically anyone so that they can engage in carrying out their violent fantasies. As a result we are reduced to rhetoric and symbolism, such as calls for the confederate flag to be removed from its mast on the state capital grounds
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Adam Sandler and me

When I was still in my early teens I became a huge fan of comic writers such as P. G. Wodehouse, S. J. Perelman, and Stephen Leacock. I loved the way they played with words to get laughs and dreamed of writing just like them. So I tried writing a comic story, a parody of the hard-boiled detective genre which Perelman in particular was a genius at, such as his famous short story Somewhere a Roscoe.
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