Sports and the Left
Chris Hayes in his TPM Book Club contribution discussing Katha Pollit’s Learning to Drive has a rather disturbing aside about sports:
My ever-growing sports obsession, to name just one example, is a source of guilt, even shame. It feels like some secret endorsement of the patriarchy.
As a committed sports fan and a committed liberal, I find this attitude distressing. There’s no real connection between left of center views and a distaste for sports. Liberals, however, are more likely to be female, which I imagine is associated with less sports fandom. Of course, this wouldn’t explain guilt over having an intense interest in sports. Since Chris is a committed feminist, I imagine he’s reacting to how sports tends to celebrate the most brutish masculine bravado and uses sexual exploitation to market and promote itself. Also, professional athletes tend to be rather sundry characters from a feminist point of view.
But it needn’t be that way. If liberals who would otherwise like professional sports feel so guilty about it that they become shy about expressing their enthusiasm, then the conservatives get to dominate an important set of cultural institutions that a large portion of America is heavily emotionally invested and interested in. There is nothing essentially liberal or conservative about football or baseball so it makes no sense to cede the athletic sphere.
More importantly, college and professional sports promote social solidarity and equality. Since I’m from the Bay Area, specifically the East Bay, my favorite football team is the Raiders, my favorite basketball team is the Warriors and my favorite baseball team is the A’s. Blacks who are less wealthy than me and who also live in the East Bay support the same teams. When I go to a Warriors or A’s game, I enter a sphere where socioeconomic status and racial identity matter much less. We’re all cheering the same team and watching the same game. We can all discuss Baron Davis’ knee issues or Dan Haren’s fastball on roughly equal terms.
When the Warriors were making their miraculous play off run, all of Oakland — in which there is gaping educational and wealth inequality — was wearing the same “We Believe” shirt and going nuts every time we beat the Mavericks. In the presence of Baron Davis, we were all equal. This is the best of what American progressive and leftists ideals have to offer. Should a self-identified social democrat turn his back on such solidarity?
