Morally straight (NSFW) (But unfortunately not the good kind of NSFW, the boring kind)
Posted on July 20, 2012 5:14 pm
Back in 2005, I was a religious bigot in public. A new team from Salt Lake City with a hideously stupid name – I forget what it was, but man, it was complete unironic self-parody – came to Los Angeles, and I thought it would be hilarious if I yelled references to Utah’s most famous religion at Utah’s new soccer team.
It wasn’t anything that got me arrested, of course. It was fairly basic stuff on the level you’d hear Laker fans say about the Utah Jazz. (Think Jim Rome caller.)
Anyway, I thought nothing of it until some time after the game, someone took me to task over it. He didn’t call me a bigot, he didn’t say I was offensive, he didn’t even say I wasn’t funny. He just said one thing.
“Dan, don’t you think we have Mormon fans?”
That brought me up pretty sharp. I’ve tried to take the pledge on religious yap ever since.
So last week, New York’s Empire Supporters Club sang “Seattle Sounders take it up the ass,” to the tune of “Ants Go Marching.” (EDIT – bungled the tune)
I thought the ESC was going to catch Technicolor hell over that one, and…wow. Nothing. Here was an organized chant that was pretty much slam-dunk homophobic, on national television, and…well, maybe I’m just being oversensitive, and you all have thicker skins than I do.
Maybe it was just that funny – funny makes up for a lot. (Or so I’ve read. I’ve been meaning to try it.) I certainly don’t see how it’s not offensive. Yes, women are also capable of performing said act…which would just make the chant sexist as well as homophobic. And no, not every gay man performs that act, either…but in the words of Maud Lebowski, “Don’t be fatuous.” Of course it was supposed to be offensive – otherwise, why sing it in the first place?
But like my Mormon jokes, that chant really only works if (1) everyone on the Sounders really is guilty as charged (or are the sort of people who would be mortified and offended by the accusation), and/or (2) no one on the Red Bulls does the same thing. Nor any of their fans.
To me, that’s the major point of weakness – you’re using a chant that applies to your own team and supporters. It isn’t even about politics, or offensiveness – it’s about not crapping where you eat. If I started a chant at the Home Depot Center mocking the other team for having male pattern baldness, how would Landon Donovan react? Or the Rogaine-ready contingent of Galaxy fans?
So it seemed like a ridiculously ill-advised chant. However, complete silence from anyone likely to be offended argues otherwise. Or maybe gay NYRB fans thought the chant was funny, too. It’s certainly possible. (This wouldn’t be the first time I misread what was and wasn’t offensive, to say the least. I rolled my eyes at the hypocrites who thought Rio Ferdinand should be indicted for calling Ashley Cole a “choc ice” – I guess they don’t have Oreo cookies in England – until I read John Amaechi’s reaction to it.)
It’s hard to be value-neutral and apolitical these days. Take, for example, the Boy Scouts of America. The BSA is unfortunately best known these days for excluding atheists (understandable, what with the oath and everything – and I say this as a diehard God-hater) and gays (which is much less understandable, to me at least – but both positions are entirely legal). It’s hugely unlikely that the Boy Scouts-MLS partnership was supposed to be anything more than getting Scouts out to games.
But the Boy Scouts have brought enough negative publicity that, according to Seth Vertelney of Goal.com, MLS is dropping the Scouts after this season. That’s a serious reversal.
Myself, I’d have dumped the associations with multi-level marketers first. (I’m fine with palling around with Lance Armstrong, but hopefully that’s a preachy blog post that can be pushed off indefinitely.) If this isn’t the first time MLS has dropped a corporate or charitable partner due to bad publicity, then I’m at a loss to tell which company would have been. Over the years MLS has been the dumped far more often than the dumper – which explains partnerships like Herbalife and Xango to begin with.
I think, predictable complaints about political correctness aside, this is a Good Thing. MLS, like every other sports organization in the 21st century, wants to turn away as few customers as possible. Even assuming that the inclusive efforts of the Chicago Fire, DC United and Chivas USA are sincere, I think we can also assume we’d see much less of it if there was a likelihood of significant backlash. There are those who are sincerely offended by such promotions, but it looks as if they will fall in the same category as Heritage Nights or Faith Nights, both of which have been longtime LA Galaxy staples, and neither of which has kept me from coming to games.
…unless all this time the Galaxy have been trying to drop subtle hints….nah.
Which means that “Seattle Sounders take it up the ass” is worse than offensive, worse than insensitive, and even worse than poorly-aimed – it’s out of date.
As far as whether taking it from the back is by definition bad, I’ll leave that discussion to Hugh Honey of Honey & Vinegar Realty.
Well said, Dan.
I still don’t see how the song works from the song it parodies. I mean, it just doesn’t make sense.
Also, based on your post here, can I still chant “You fix matches!!” followed by 5 claps at Marco Di Vaio? As far as I know, neither I, nor my fellow fans, nor any of the players I root for have fixed matches for illegal gambling syndicates while at Bologna. I’ll change my tune should any of these parties do so.
I tried to defend this song on another board, and I can’t find the thread. But I’ll apologize here for my stupidity.
P.S. Its to the tune of Ants Go Marching
For some reason, I think it would be hilarious if an opposing supporters section responded by singing Dead Or Alive “You Spin Me Right Round.”
(No, not the Flo Rida version. Can I get a career doing lazy versions of popular songs with just a couple of unremarkable changes?)
I hate to be that guy, but.
“Why MLS can’t into footie chants.”
ESC has a very strong “nobody tells us what to sing” attitude. This particular one is a fairly new addition, but there have been complaints about their Spanish songs for years, and (the polite version of) their response is “we’re not interested in what you think”.
Gay4soccer.com’s RBNY correspondent has publicly taken ESC’s side in this. He even threatened to quit G4S over it, not wanting to be the “gay PC police”.
The traditional argument against this is “taking it up the ass is not exclusive to homosexuals.”
I’m not going to get into the “nobody tells us what to do thing,” but yeah, that’s the group’s mentality in a nutshell.
Is it just me, or does anyone think that children might be attending or watching these games? Do you want children making those comments? Its bad enough that referees completely ignore the law against foul and abusive language by players, does everyone have to sink to the level of a drunken hooligan?
We do have Oreos in the UK.. they’re just not very popular.
stop being a baby zico
I’m guessing the person from ESC De-attached to gay4soccer, found a girlfriend..
I remember the Rapids supporters wore sars masks when we hosted the Chinese national team. I thought that went a bit far..lol
Can’t we be upset that it’s just not very creative or funny?
@Jough, the answer to your question is yes.
Even so, there is still a need to oppose blatant homophobia, and that is what it is, as none of the Sounders Women were extant in front of ESC.
I had to process this one a bit before responding. Dan correctly points to signs of progress. But the job of protecting individual rights is never done. The job of insisting on decency and respect is never done.
Yes, the ESC chant is stupid, uncreative, and dated. The same could be said for the pervasive and oppressive racism in Italian soccer stadiums. It does not square with the official positions of European governments, political parties, academics, pundits, etc., etc. But bullies are bullies. And the most important thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good persons to do nothing.
I am struggling to build a law practice in a purple town in Washington state, because it would be extremely uncomfortable for me to be a gentleman farmer in Odum, Georgia, on my father’s land that I stand to inherit a portion of. I would risk my life and my partner’s life by being myself on my family’s own land.
So, until that is no longer the case in Odum, Georgia and all parts of New Jersey, the ESC chant is not merely uncreative and dated embarassingly stupid, it is offensive and threatening and should be met with censure. ESC can stand outside the stadium they have been thrown out of if they don’t care what I and other decent people think.
And one more thing – if we had advanced so far that the ESC song was immaterial, other than its obvious stupidity and uncreativity, wouldn’t we know who the personal lives of gay Sounders and Red Bulls to the same extent that we know the personal lives of straight players? In other words, it is none of our business, but it is cute to hear about Keller’s twins, and he does not disguise the fact he is a husband and father. The fact that ESC feels free to sing such a song is proof that protesting it is not irrelevant.
The thing that has always struck me about the ESC is that for a bunch of supposedly straight men they sing about gay sex a lot.
How long has mixed race marriage been fully legal in th US? 40 years? Hopefully we look back at this period and our attitudes toward homosexuality with the same sense of bewilderment as we do now at women not being allowed to vote, institutionalized racism, and soccer with commercials. Keep fighting the good fight Dan.
I never was into using gay slurs to get people off their game. Perhaps I enjoyed the creativity of the well-timed “go for the jugular” quips that got me warned and even kicked out of a few games of ice hockey or American football. You know, the kind that gives the target a look in his eyes of wanting to separate your head from your torso.
The gay slurs bounced off of me because they seem small-minded. But if I were to say I want them out of stadiums, it isn’t because the intelligence is missing, but because there are indeed young and impressionable minds in attendance who are sponges for creative and colorful remarks to use away from the stadiums. (Not that I ever was.)
Personally, I think the gay community is too uptight to enjoy their day in the sun. This legislated acceptance at the social level is artificial and I think many in that community aren’t very comfortable with it because it represents a half-step toward their ultimate goal of full acceptance by all.
As long as humans are walking the face of this Earth, there are always going to be opposing viewpoints. But one thing we should never lose is our sense of humor. If you can’t laugh at yourself then you may be leading a miserable life.
I admire the Empire attitude of “we don’t care what you think” because of it’s unwritten statement that you can’t buy their minds. This political correctness crap is approaching the levels of McCarthyism and we all know how much better a society we became of that.
Dan says that’s it’s about not crapping where you eat, and I agree. I think that a good example of what he’s talking about might be an incident several years ago when former Galaxy goalkeeper Kevin Hartman was playing for Kansas City against New England. A group of Revs fans chanted “L.A. reject” at him, apparently forgetting that their own goalkeeper, Matt Reis, also used to play for L.A.
Perhaps these Sounders players are sexually liberated straight males who simply like having their prostates massaged by their female companions?
Loney said something positive (well, at least not negative) about Chivas USA.
Why am I the only one freaking out?
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