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Monday, July 3, 2006
No defense for dilettantes
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Off the Ball discovered an excellent surprise when consulting her trusted Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current American English for the accurate meaning of the word at the heart of this entry.
dil-et-tante, n., & adj., 1. — a person who studies a subject superficially; 2. — a person who enjoys the arts.
Indeed, this is the most perfect word to describe OTB’s frame of mind as the World Cup enters the semifinal stage. There are no more dilettantes remaining in the competition, and that includes England, which despite its talent and rich tradition always seems to come up short and thereby magnificently surprise its homeland.
Portugal saw to that, and although Scolari’s boys don’t have the World Cup pedigree of France, Germany and Italy, they certainly weren’t considered a longshot to be in this spot.
Yes, all the pretenders have all been sent home, at least those in uniform. Unfortunately, the World Cup seems to draw them in spades when it comes to the writing and other artistic crafts. These would be the “special” boys, at least most of them are boys, who drop in on the World Cup every four years and make pronouncements about the sport and what it means to the planet.
Some also get sent there exactly because of their lack of a soccer background, with the “thinking” being that they can translate the spectacle to their American audience better than someone who’s all into footy, too much, they think, to be properly detached and “objective.” Passion and insight are casually surrendered for the predictable comforts of bloodless, barren prose or commentary, because it’s not something we’re supposed to get all worked up about anyway. It’s not our sport, you know.
What strikes OTB as more than a bit odd is how some heavy-hitters of the political journalism trade find it necessary to wax poetic about the sport. New Republic editor Franklin Foer gets a pass because while he didn’t quite explain how soccer explains the world in his book, How Soccer Explains the World, the guy truly is a knowledgeable, involved fan. His passion shows on nearly every page.
And while it’s good that such influential figures follow soccer well enough to write about it for top-flight publications, she’s also just a wee bit frosted that these missives are considered sufficient treatment of the world’s biggest sporting event.
New Yorker contributor Jeffrey Toobin adds to this drip of lamentable, overwrought treatment. OTB thinks he’s usually spot-on when writing about the political sewer that is D.C. But his article in the July 3 issue (not available online) reeks, and reeks badly, of what she truly loathes:
“In early June, my thirteen-year-old son, Adam, and I flew to Frankfurt for the start of the games. This was supposed to be the dodgiest of the twelve venues in Germany, because the English team, accompanied by its notoriously loutish fans, would be playing its first game there, against Paraguay.”
Ah, yes, parachute-dropping into authentic World Cup experience! Gotta start with England, of course! If OTB reads one more travelogue by an aging American baby boom dad and his precocious budding teenage lad, she will absolutely lose her cookies! It’s not about you!
Somehow Toobin manages to work in noted soccer dad and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and ties up all the loose ends with yet another tired, but brief treatise on why the World Cup eludes the American imagination. Thankfully, he goes to another “expert” to get the definitive answer.
” ‘Soccer does not have the rhythms that Americans are used to,’ Kissinger told me last week.”
That would be Henry Kissinger. Told me! In his subterranean monotone, no doubt.
While ol’ Hank is a footy obsessive, this is a far superior take on soccer’s cultural disconnect in America from someone who is not. If you’re going to be a dilettante, at least have some fun doing so!
Toobin’s contribution is almost as embarrassing as the piece novelist Salman Rushdie (another OTB fave) wrote for the same magazine several years ago, professing his undying love for Tottenham Hotspur. You don’t have to be an Arsenal fan to laugh out loud. If you love Spurs, you probably cringed.
Getting back to the definition of dilettante, this is what OTB surely is when it comes to the arts. She loves them, but studies them superficially, and certainly would never write about them in any way. Not even her visit several years ago to the most fabulous museum in the world.
She only wishes others would follow her example. They are the Great Pretenders, but they never seem to go away.
