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Leamington Letters #58: the Spectator at the feast

3/11/2013

14 Comments

 
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My friend Parn Taimsalu, an Estonian who lives in our village in France in the company of his wife and an unspecified number of pedigree dogs, has sent me a link to a piece in The Spectator, a magazine in which the right wing play at being intellectuals. The Spectator was first published in 1628, making it the oldest continuously published magazine in the UK and thus, probably, the world. Its editors are usually previous Tory grandees – Ian Gilmour, too-clever-by-half Iain McCleod; or those about to be Tory grandees – Nigel Lawson, Boris Johnson.

I have been reading it this last week because the link from Parn referred me to an article by one Alex Massie, and its title read as follows: ‘Ed Miliband supports the Boston Red Sox. This is all anyone need know about him.’

I didn’t know this. I know that the Sox are followed by the likes of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, Simon Sharma, pretty much all of the Kennedys and some designer guy who lives in New York – there is no shortage of slebs and famous people who are part of the Nation. But it had never occurred to me that a senior British politician might also be found with me, in the early hours of the morning last week, punching the air and singing “Let’s go Red Sox’.

As you would expect, the article by Alex Massie included a whole load of shit about the Sox. It made comparisons between the Sox and Labour:  “Each defeat, each disaster, each betrayal remained raw, just as the Labour Party never really forgives, or gets over, its own defeats.”  He went further, quoting the Berkeley linguist and political theorist George Lakoff (I commend him to you, he’s a sort of West Coast Chomsky) who came up with the idea of mummy Democrats and and daddy Republicans, extending the thought to mummy Sox and daddy Yankees.

It’s pretty simplistic stuff, to be honest. Daddy has the money and the power. Mummy loves you and forgives your failings. Er, that’s it, really.

So is it an appropriate analogy after the Sox take the Series for the third time in a less than a decade? Perhaps it is true that many of us have assumed an air of moral superiority over the Yankees and the insufferably smug Cardinals and the nouveau Dodgers and ...the rest of those who have looked down on us for nearly a 100 years. And it is certainly true that we all embraced Lucchino’s epithet for the Yankees, the Evil Empire. But then so did the Yankees. To the extent that they patented it and sued T-shirt makers who dared to use the words.

That sounds like the Tories to me. Who cares what anyone says so long as I can make money out of it.

But unlike The Spectator, I’m not here to make political points today. I’m here to celebrate, with a great city, a great team. A team in which a wonderfully diverse group of guys came together and fought together in a common cause. And had fun while they did it. And never gave up. And always believed. And attracted the hearts and minds of the masses in so doing.

It occurs to me now that that may sound just a tad socialist, but it wasn’t my purpose. Worth thinking about though, isn’t it?

Today from the everysmith vault: Pink Floyd, from Meadowlands in 1987. Jill and I watched a documentary about them last night and realised that we have ignored them for too long. Have we? I’ll let you know.

P.S. Just seen this and felt I had to share. It's Mike Napoli heading for home plate in the early hours ...

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14 Comments
Allan
3/11/2013 10:03:19

This is good. I saw the piece (I read the New Statesman too!) and had intended to draw it to your attention. Their analogy is spurious of course but nicely provocative for a Red Sox leftie like yourself and on this occasion has produced a fine response. Are you also Harvard like Miliband and Sharma?

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Allan
3/11/2013 10:35:12

P.S. You do not mention - I assume in a spirit of scrupulous impartiality - that Massie admits, at the end of the article, that he is not only a Tory, but a Yankee! Who's your daddy?

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MichaelMac
3/11/2013 11:10:05

I too saw and enjoyed the original, which was unashamedly biased, but yours is an excellent and moderate response. Which I suppose you can now afford to do with three Series wins to one this century. Can Miliband and Labour emulate this? Mind you, in baseball terms, it's the Labour Sox against an unnatural coalition of Yankees and Mets!

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MichaelMac
3/11/2013 11:13:24

I too saw the original piece and enjoyed its unashamed bias. Yours is a moderate response to it, but you can afford to be magnanimous now with three Series to one this century. Mind you, if Labour want emulate this record, the Labour Sox must defeat an unnatural coalition of Yankees and Mets.

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Anders
3/11/2013 11:31:59

The relationship between sport(s) and politics is an interesting one. The most obvious examples are the football clubs which often represent religious (and therefore political) differences - thinking of Rangers and Celtic obviously, but also Liverpool and Everton - but there are also examples of clubs which come to represent a movement. Barcelona is the obvious one, Catalonia in the new camp. Marseille also as a club which focuses the independence of Provence in opposition to Paris St Germain. The Red Sox are New England. They epitomise what this part of the States is about. I like to think so anyway!

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RogerW
3/11/2013 14:15:47

Love the fact that the Yankees patented Evil Empire. You have to tip your cap to an organisation that makes an insult it's own. But they have a track record of grabbing anything good out of Boston. The babe?

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CJ
4/11/2013 01:46:21

That was one of the first shows to start with Diamond. Momentary loss of reason? Forget the momentary in most cases. No Waters who was in court suing the other two. But despite everything that year was as good as they ever got imho. And this show one of the best of the year. Good choice.

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Anthony
4/11/2013 07:51:27

Boring. Pretensious. Don't waste your time.

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Chris Williams
4/11/2013 02:47:27

Enjoyed both The Spectator article and your response. Good fun from two opposite poles in both political and sporting allegiances.

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Paul
4/11/2013 07:41:30

Who cares about the politics?! The Six won the Seies and right now, that's all that matters.

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myers
4/11/2013 15:44:20

As we Italians say ... see Napoli and die!

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OverseasFan
6/11/2013 03:51:13

See Napoli and diet!

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Mark
6/11/2013 04:05:57

Haha! What a legend that man is! He 'd just done a shift in a bar on Boylston! Don't ya love them all? He may just have sobered up for spring training.

Dan S
6/11/2013 07:30:19

The Napoli picture is fun and good luck to him. The most important image is that of the 617 shirt being placed, with the trophy, at the finish of the marathon route. That's what tested was about. That's what the Sox and Boston are about. Be strong.

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     Max Smith

    European writer, radical, restaurateur and Red Sox fan. 70-something husband, father, step-father. and grandfather. Resident in Warwick, England.

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