The Case for Dershowitz

by on September 14, 2008 6
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I see in my well-thumbed copy of Chutzpah that Dershowitz was a big sports fan as a kid (of course, he's competitive) and "cut classes frequently to attend Brooklyn Dodgers games…" I guess I should have walked to the shelf before sniggering at Dershowitz's allegiance to the Red Sox yesterday. The Dodgers left Brooklyn angry when Dershowitz was still at Yeshiva U. [err--Brooklyn College; went to Yeshiva High]. I lost my Baltimore Colts at the same time in my life and have been football-team-less since, so I can't blame him for switching to the Sox. Though my father-in-law, who grew up in Philadelphia, pulls for the Oakland A's. The Philadelphia Athletics were his team.

About Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in Beyondoweiss, US Policy in the Middle East

{ 6 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. Susie says:
    September 14, 2008 at 1:20 pm

    Phil, Have you read "Obama's Jews" by Bernard Avishai in HARPER'S MAGAZINE / October 2008? Avishai discusses some of the questions you raise every day in your brilliant essays. Thanks for your great work.

  2. anon says:
    September 14, 2008 at 1:45 pm

    The Jews use to think sports were only for the goy; they mocked it as a red herring in terms of real politics. Who gives a shit about sports relative to real politics?

  3. the Sword of Gideon says:
    September 14, 2008 at 3:24 pm

    Anon, your an idiot. I'll give you one example. Most of the boxing champions in the 1920's and 30's were Jews.

  4. higginslads says:
    September 14, 2008 at 5:13 pm

    My mother was a huge NY Giants / Willie Mays fan, and when they packed up and left, she turned to The New York Metropolitans (as Steve Somers of WFAN fame would say). So, I'm a Mets fan, and boy did they just lose a bad one today.

    I've been able to give up television almost entirely (most of the mainstream media, for that matter), but the Mets and now football have kept me tuning in to some degree. Damn sports!

    I remember what Noam Chomsky said about how when you really think about it, being a fan of a team is just plain silly. We don't know these guys in any way, we don't move in their circles. I mean, what do we really care if the Mets win, or the Cowboys, or whoever. Maybe it has some significance in college football (or high school) if you attended the school you root for, but why allow it to passively control our emotions in any way?

    Of course, Chomsky got a lot of heat for those remarks, even from admitted Chomskyites, who most often absorb everything the man says without a second thought (I can say that, because I used to be one). But it's always stuck with me, nevertheless (for his part, Chomsky went on to admit attending some games – basketball, I believe – with his grandson).

  5. higginslads says:
    September 14, 2008 at 5:16 pm

    Here's some of the Noam Chomsky comments on sports:

    "You know, I remember in high school, already I was pretty old. I suddenly asked myself at one point, why do I care if my high school team wins the football game? [laughter] I mean, I don't know anybody on the team, you know? [audience roars] I mean, they have nothing to do with me, I mean, why I am cheering for my team? It doesn't make any — it doesn't make sense.

    But the point is, it does make sense: it's a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority, and group cohesion behind leadership elements — in fact, it's training in irrational jingoism. That's also a feature of competitive sports. I think if you look closely at these things, I think, typically, they do have functions, and that's why energy is devoted to supporting them and creating a basis for them and advertisers are willing to pay for them and so on."

    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1333247/posts

  6. higginslads says:
    September 14, 2008 at 5:18 pm

    "In fact, I have the habit when I'm driving of turning on these radio call-in programs, and it's striking when you hear the ones about sports. They have these groups of sports reporters, or some kind of experts on a panel, and people call in and have discussions with them. First of all, the audience obviously is devoting an enormous amount of time to it all. But the more striking fact is, the callers have a tremendous amount of expertise, they have detailed knowledge of all kinds of things, they carry on these extremely complex discussions…

    …And when you look at the structure of them, they seem like a kind of mathematics. It's as though people want to work out mathematical problems, and it they don't have calculus and arithmetic, they work them out with other structures…And what all these things look like is that people just want to use their intelligence somehow…

    Well, in our society we have things that you might use your intelligence on, like politics, but people really can't get involved in them in a very serious way — so what they do is put their minds to other things, such as sports. You're trained to be obedient; you don't have an interesting job; there's no work around for you that's creative; in the cultural environment you're a passive observer of usually pretty tawdry stuff…So what's left?

    …And I suppose that's also one of the basic functions it serves society in general: it occupies the populations, and it keeps them from trying to get involved with things that really matter. In fact, I presume that's part of the reason why spectator sports are supported to the degree they are by the dominant institutions."

    http://elliptic.typepad.com/elliptic_blog/2003/12/chomsky_on_spor.html

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