Against Fairy Tales: Sports, Politics, and Otherwise

I hate fairy tales and fairy tale endings but I do wish I could find a copy of Disney’s Song of the South. They foster unrealistic expectations in people’s relationships and most of the Disney movies that take place in other countries, trying desperately to retell a tale from another culture, end up being more essentialist and racist than the story ever was.

But fairy tales just do not happen in the movies.  There is also something in sports they like to call “story book seasons,” and for baseball fans, that season was 1998.  It was too good to be true. Baseball was declared “to be back” according to sports commentators after disinterest took place during 1994 baseball players’ strike.  The protagonist of this fairytale was undoubtedly Mark McGwire, first baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals.  He hit a league record *70 homeruns, while his co-fairytale-CEO Sammy Sosa passed Roger Maris’ record with *66.  I will never recognize these achievements, and I never have. I remember distinctly arguing in 8th grade and freshman years of high school that McGwire and Sosa were cheaters (because they took steroids) and deserved asteriks. I stick by my opinions then as I do now. I am no believe in fairy tales, and never have been.

Today, I add Brett Favre’s 2009 season with the Minnesota Vikings to be yet another sports  fairy tale as well.  It was just too good to be true. The rushing slump that Adrian Peterson went through at the latter half of the season (even being shutdown by the Arizona Cardinals that ultimately cost me in FFL), the having a career low 11 interceptions. I did not want Favre to have a storybook ending to his career. Why should we want to relive the past, over and over again? Favre, was like so, well, 1998. Yesterday’s loss was God’s funny way of repaying Favre, coach Brad Childress, and the Minnesota Vikings for running up the score against God’s America’s team. Admit it, Eagle fans, the Cowboys choose not to run up the score, in either of the three games against you guys because we have class.

Lastly, on politics. I never voted for George W. Bush, the great Christian conservative hope nor did I vote for the Obamassiah. And I believe that people who think that Ron Paul or any third party candidate has a shot at ever becoming president are living in an more epic fairy tale than Mark McGwire ever was a part of. President Obama is not a Marxist, he is not a progressive, he is not a socialist, he is not a political figure of messianic proportions. Rather, we project all of our hopes and hates and ideologies onto him. Simply put, he is an intellectual, that we have casted and recasted into whatever we want, for our purposes.  The real questions that should be asked, as one scholar said, should be, what are the real structural changes that Obama has made in Washington, D.C., rather than the merely symbolic ones?

I still agree with Bill Clinton, though.