I woke up yesterday morning to Frank Deford on NPR, whining once again about the kids on his lawn. Usually I shrug it off. Hey, sometimes I even agree. I can be a wretched misanthrope myself somedays. But this morning, he really went off the deep end:

Lots of times, in other English-speaking countries, a tie is called a draw. Well, partner, in these United States, when we say “draw,” we don’t mean a namby-pamby even-Steven — we mean John Wayne a-reachin’ for his six-shooter. Now that’s the American way to draw, a-standin’ our ground. […]

But of course, the rest of the world loves soccer. And it is reliably calculated that 30 percent of all soccer games end tied, drawed, deadlocked, nil-nil. How does the rest of the unexceptional world tolerate this? It’s exactly this kind of thinking, I believe, which is why they can’t fix the bloody euro. The dollar is a winner. The euro is a tie. Get off the dime, Europe, and play to win.

I’ve had this discussion now many times, and I’ll say it again: soccer isn’t for everyone. There’s a valid argument to be made that ties aren’t as satisfying as having every game decided outright. I’ll also say that I’d rather watch a hard-fought 0-0 ¹ draw than the monotonous point-trading of an 82-81 basketball game. Only one of those points matters, guys! Why should I care about the other 81?

But whatever, I’m getting off track. I don’t care about that. I don’t need to explain soccer to some cantankerous old coot, or to anybody.

What bothers me is how his argument twists from the theory that soccer is boring (blah, blah, blah) to something more insidious – using his dumb opinion to form the ground for the much more dangerous, jingoistic, and wrong-headed idea of inherent American Exceptionalism.

Here’s the thing, Frankie – can I call you Frankie?

America isn’t great because it keeps fighting until somebody loses – that’s one of its primary faults. I love America for what it’s accomplished over generations, and for what it’s allowed me to accomplish – not for its growing obsession with a binary “us” versus “them,” “win” or “lose.” It’s the mindset that’s at the core of all of today’s debates: the idea that if “they” win, “we” lose. It’s the cause of the increasing, divisive partisanship that’s infected this country and its politics. While European parliaments form multi-party coalitions with common goals to move their countries forward and out of hard times, the two American political parties spend a majority of their time trying to keep the other guys from winning. And in the end, all this does is guarantee a loss for everyone involved.

Everybody loves to win, Frank, but the truth is contrary to your opinions: America’s fixation on winning isn’t what puts us ahead; it’s what’s holding us back. And think about it: as unsatisfying as a draw ² can be, who’s ever been satisfied by a loss?

Cosimo and Napoleon by Yan Nascimbene

Stumbled across this artist through The Art of Animation ¹. Loved the art immediately, and then I realized that I was clearly looking at illustrations of Italo Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees, which is a fantastic little novel that I’d recommend to anyone who likes things.

Elizabeth Bear at Clarkesworld:

I’m as guilty as anyone of taking myself too seriously.

[…F]or you, it’s become an addiction. You seem to think that nothing fun can have value; that only grimdark portentousness and dystopia mean anything. You wallow in human suffering and despair, and frankly—it makes me tired.[…]

The thing is, that kind of cynical pose is really just a juvenile reaction to the world not being what we hoped. We can’t have everything—so we reject anything. But it’s adolescent, darling, and most of us outgrow it. We realize that as much as the world can be a ball of dung, and horrible things can happen for no reason, there are positive outcomes too, sometimes. I’m not going to say things balance out, because of course they don’t—life is not fair—but it’s not just awful, either.

I like this – I think it makes a lot of points that illuminate why I’ve been driven towards children’s literature. Definitely Harry Potter, A Wrinkle in Time, and even the heavy-handed His Dark Materials trilogy had more lightness than most of the adult speculative fiction ¹ I’ve read in recent years; they take themselves just a little less seriously, which allows me to approach them with a little more ease, and – inevitably – seriousness. It’s one of the problems I’ve had with A Song of Ice and Fire – even the levity in those books drips with self-seriousness. The characters are interesting, the plot is pretty compelling, but golly, J.R.R. – I’m sorry, G.R.R. – if you would just relax a bit, I bet I’d have ten times more interest in your seemingly-endless saga.

Boy, every time I try to talk about genre fiction, I end up ranting about how underwhelmed I am by Game of Thrones. Sorry about that – it’s fine. It’s perfectly fine.

(via @neilhimself)

Linda Holmes at NPR:

The MPAA will allow you more leeway with non-sexual “brief nudity” than sexual “brief nudity,” a guideline that amounts to viewing a scene where a man walks toward a half-dressed woman with a gun and telling a teenager, “Well, if he shoots her, that’s fine, but if they start making out, please cover your eyes.” A PG-13 movie’s nudity can’t be “sexually oriented,” but its violence is okay unless it’s both realistic and “extreme or persistent.” It may be right and it may be wrong to be more troubled as a parent by sexual nudity than realistic (but not extreme or persistent!) violence, but it is not objective; it stands in judgment of the relative inappropriateness of a headless woman and a topless one.

Have I mentioned recently how thoroughly I enjoy Holmes and NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast? Gosh.