American Ignorants: Palin Grotesque

Steven Wells' article is interesting enough to reproduce parts of it without comment. I hope you go check it out. Sarah Palin is interesting for a lot of reasons, but I am interested in the way in which everything she says is a lie. She and her McCain handlers chose to highlight all her weaknesses by putting each bizarre contradiction and misrepresentation boldly upfront in her introductory speeches and canned interviews ("thanks no thanks" to bridge to nowhere, the Alaskan exploitation of earmarks and federal money, the (forced?) pregnancy before marriage and (forced?) military service of her children conveniently made to serve her political career, etc.) A bold entrance into national politics, setting a nice baseline upon which to build a career as a "Big Liar."

So why has the Republican candidate for vice-president worked so hard at branding herself with the hockey mom label? Of course it might simply be that she's genuinely immersed in ice-hockey culture. The thug who impregnated her 17-year-old daughter (and who described himself as "a fucking redneck" on his MySpace page) certainly is.

"I live to play hockey," he writes. 'Ya fuck with me I'll kick [your] ass'"

And there, I think - in a sweary nutshell - is the reason Palin is so keen to be seen as a hockey mom. In the minds of the effete conservative elite who run the Republican party, the hockey-playing yob who got Palin's daughter pregnant represents an idealised form of American masculinity - unthinking, brutish, willfully ignorant, easy to manipulate, unquestioningly patriotic, proudly reactionary, quick to respond to any perceived threat with overwhelming violence - and very unlikely to ever vote Democrat. Or - by extension - play soccer.

For the weird truth is that while millions more Americans play and watch soccer than play and watch hockey, millions of Americans stills see hockey as the more American sport.

In the big cities - especially in California and the liberal north-east - soccer shirts now outnumber all other sports related streets wear gear (on non-match days, at least). In Philadelphia - a city that prides itself on its gritty, down-to-earth, parochial fan culture - a stroll around Center City on any Saturday afternoon shows evidence of the massive inroads cosmopolitan soccer culture has made into the American psyche. And it isn't just the shirts, or the soccer decals on every other car-arse. Soccer is everywhere in popular culture - the default choice whenever a movie or TV show needs a scene set at a sports event.

But there remains a brutish, ignorant, xenophobic rump who regard soccer as effete, foreign and profoundly anti-American. And they are of course overwhelmingly attracted to the Republican party. For these die-hards soccer is emblematic of an imagined anti-American liberal (and, whisper it, Jewish) enemy-within out to undermine "real" American culture.

And then there's the sport of ice hockey. Despite the fact that in both ice-hockey and soccer one of the most eagerly anticipated scenes is that of players slapping at each other ineffectually (ice hockey players because they're wearing pads and skates, the soccer players because all their muscles are in their legs and, besides, they've done nothing but play soccer since they were five and so never learned to fight properly), in the minds of what passes for the Republican intelligentsia, the two sports are worlds apart. Hockey is unpretentious, hardscrabble, working class and white. While soccer is French and gay.

In the TV series Rescue Me - about unashamedly macho firefighters coming to terms with both post-9-11 trauma and their role in an increasingly feminised America, Dennis O'Leary and his super tough buddies are amateur ice hockey players. Of course they are. Had they been soccer players, at least a third of Americans would have been confused.

Waidaminnit, what are they saying here? That 9-11 turned these guys gay?

Of course, Palin misreads and underestimates both America and Americans; Republicans always do. On the train home from Philly today the three seats in front of me were filled with teenage field-hockey players - just part of the latest generation of women freed from spectating and cheerleading by America's awesome equality-of-sports-funding legislation, Title IX.

There are conservative Americans who would no doubt find these confident, cocky, assertive teenagers un-womanly and uncouth (and some conservative readers of this blog too. I'm thinking particularly of the reader who described Philadelphia's amazing female "alleycat" bike racers as "extremely unattractive, damaged, self-hating, aggressive femiNazis/lesbians.")

But they're crazy and wrong. These women look empowered, relaxed, athletic and totally in control. And they're America's next crop of young female voters. Not soccer moms. Not hockey moms. But players.