Every once in a while, you write about something that strikes a chord or nerve in people. People have grievances in common — certainly in political groupings they do.
Among the issues I discuss in Impromptus today is the intrusion of partisan politics into sportswriting. You’ll be reading some sports piece, going along as nice as you please, and bam: The writer hits you with a partisan political comment. These comments always come from the left, at least in my experience. And I have a theory — nothing too complicated:
Some sports guys, I think, are a tiny bit embarrassed — at some level — to be sportswriters. And they have to prove that they’re just as serious — just as left-wing, virtuous, “engaged,” etc. — as their colleagues on the news and editorial desks. It’s as though they say, “I may write about the NFL, but I hate Bush just as much as you do, I swear!”
Politics-in-sportswriting is a pet peeve of mine, and, judging by my mail, it is a pet peeve of many NRO readers. One man said he was reading a golf book, and enjoying it to the hilt, and the author just had to make a couple of anti-Bush remarks: right out of the blue. Apropos of nothing. Why do they do this? Why do they have to flick some mud into your banana split?
Why do musicians, in the middle of concerts, have to speak from the stage, to declare their enmity toward Bush and their allegiance to Obama? Do they worry that music is not enough? Are they afraid that someone might think . . . they’re Republican? No one thinks that, I can assure them.
Okay, Issue No. 2: the plunking of ugly, soulless, nasty buildings next to buildings of beauty, nobility, or grace. It’s bad enough that the repulsive buildings are put up in the first place. But why do they have to be placed next to architectural works that are meant to please the eye and lift up the spirit a little? Is it an accident — an absence of taste, a dearth of intelligence — or a matter of deliberate meanness and destruction?
I’m full of cheer in this post, I know. I promise something lighter later!