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Apologize for What?
I came back online from Shabbat to witness a strange and incredibly disturbing phenomenon: the mainstream media at best white-washing the North Korean regime, and at worst, running interference for it. Here are a few highlights:
This media love-fest was the subject of my New York Post column running in Monday’s paper. In it, I explain:
One does not have to be a fan of the Trump administration to realize just how misguided it is to give a brutal dictator and his ruling family attaboys like they’re pussyhat-wearing members of the anti-Trump #resistance. The resistance in North Korea, after all, is treated a bit differently.
Which prompted this tweet:
https://twitter.com/bethanyshondark/status/962814072608690177
And almost proving my point, Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten responded:
It's not the most brutal regime in human history, Bethany. You need to apologize.
— Gene Weingarten (@geneweingarten) February 11, 2018
Hey, if you're genuinely clueless, fine.
— Gene Weingarten (@geneweingarten) February 11, 2018
https://twitter.com/bethanyshondark/status/962816144838135808
What Bethany is saying is at the very least arguable and your hostility and condescension are entirely characteristic of your preening and self-infatuated journalism.
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) February 11, 2018
Thank you Gene, for proving my point. And for also inspiring hundreds of dollars of donations for a fundraiser on behalf of North Korean refugees I’ve been running for the last day since I came back online from Shabbat.
@mkhammer's tweet was the initial inspiration to give. @geneweingarten inspired me to give more.
— Bryan S. Myrick (@BryanMyrick) February 11, 2018
While the media have been white-washing the North Korean regime and downplaying its brutality, freedom-lovers have raised enough in the last day for three refugees to find safe haven.
Published in Journalism
I think I know my mind pretty well on this subject. But please mansplain it to me if I am in error on the facts. BTW I have no issue with roaring or singing fans. Or spectator sports in general. I wasn’t aware thst soccer is “foreign.” I don’t watch much soccer on TV. I see it on TV at the car-wash, on a screen that sits between the little green trees and the gumball machine.
There are good future careers for some individuals coming from the Olympics (like ice skaters) when the big ribbon winners develop a profile from the games. However, I do think the whole envelope is more of a state-vs-state portrayal than the amateur support system it was originally designed to come from. And that has bothered me for some time.
What exactly makes a society “superior” (including U.S.A. or any other) because it found some extraordinary body talents among its citizens, and fostered them with concentrated training? Yes, the individuals added their dedication and focus on that training to make a personal success, but that’s how I like to watch it. However I don’t grasp “group identity” with non-Olympic sports and teams (ie. city or university) either so I’m weird that way.
I’ve been watching European league soccer and World Cup soccer for over 20 years. If there were any instances during that time that the player names were NOT on the backs of the shirts, they were exceptions rather than the rule. I’m not sure from where you pulled that piece of your argument. I think it used to be the case in the 1980s and earlier that player names were not common, as players didn’t even wear the same number from game to game, so it was not known which player would wear which jersey until the day of the game. You have to go back 30 years for that.
The term “FIFA stadiums” suggests that you are only aware of the World Cup which happens once every four years and is not representative of day-to-day professional soccer, which operates more like U.S. sports leagues. If you want to draw a 1:1 comparison between the NFL and soccer, do so with something comparable, like the English Premier League, where the players all wear their names on the shirts. Further evidence of their individuality is that you can see their faces! This is just a very weird idea that soccer is less individualistic than a sport in which every player is a giant covered in pads and a helmet.
I am pretty sure that most English Premier League stadiums are smaller than most NFL stadiums. With a few exceptions in Europe — Old Trafford, Camp Nou, San Siro — and the world — the Maracana in Brazil, a few in Argentina — NFL and many college football stadiums are bigger than soccer stadiums. What this has to do with individuality is beyond me.
[to be continued…]
[continued…]
Further, soccer relies more on individual skill within the the team framework than does gridiron football, which is notorious for its giant playbooks. With set plays, NFL players becomes little more than cogs in a machine, tasked with carrying out precision maneuvers. Soccer does not, with a few exceptions like free kicks and corner kicks, have “plays” — it’s improvisational within the tactical plan for facing the opposing team.
I could go on about how soccer leagues, as they are organized abroad, are also truer meritocracies than US professional sports with their closed welfare systems, but this isn’t the right place for it.