As I pointed out the other day, many people have reacted to the “alt-lit” rape scandal by blurring the lines between their natural disgust at those accusations and their aesthetic and stylistic annoyance with the alt-lit culture. That’s gross and misguided. Being annoyed by someone else’s style and culture should not be confused with feeling revulsion towards rape accusations. Those things are not the same, and blurring those lines just undermines the effort to seriously combat sexual assault.
Now, the same dynamic is playing out in baseball. The much-hated Saint Louis Cardinals and their much-hated fanbase are celebrating yet another trip to the National League Championship Series. As a Cubs fan, I find this deeply annoying. But I don’t find it immoral, because who wins baseball games is not a moral question. That hasn’t stopped other people who are annoyed by the Cardinals from trying, though. Because some small number of Cardinals fans acted in very shitty manner towards Ferguson protesters, many people on social media now have ammunition to say that the team they don’t like is not only annoying, but racist and conservative. The kind of people who create the cloud of performative morality that envelops the elite internet have once again found, with typical good fortune, that what they like is indistinguishable from what is good. Me, I would say that confusing your tribal athletic passions with your distaste for racism and police violence is not a progressive or helpful way to act. But that’s just me, apparently.
(Maybe worst of all is the suggestion that there’s any fanbase alive that isn’t chock full of racist fans. I promise: the team you like is beloved by some of the worst people on earth.)
I’ve said in the past that our media elites seem to believe in a juvenile moral universe — Manichean, simplistic, and filled with perfect clarity about every moral controversy, to the point where they not only already know what the answer to every moral question is, they can’t believe that you don’t already agree with them. It’s very childish, in the literal sense of being the way that children think about the world. But it’s also a convenient moral universe. It’s one where there’s no space between their moral convictions and their aesthetic preferences, where the artists and creators whose work they enjoy are also political paragons, where they and their friends occupy a different moral strata than the rest of us, and where they are always the righteous heroes of every drama. Nice work if you can get it.
An almost lifelong white male middle class (after leaving StL) Cardinals fan, growing up I wanted to be Bob Gibson or Lou Brock or Curt Flood or Orlando Cepeda – who the hell wanted to be Tim McCarver, Dal Maxvill or Nellie Briles?! In the 70s, who was cooler than Bake McBride? And in the 80s, without discounting John Tudor, Ozzie Smith, Vince Coleman, Terry Pendleton, Willie McGee, and Lonnie Smith made that team go. I’ve been making basically the same argument your making – to little or no effect. Even folks on Dave Zirin’s page are aggressively embracing the ecological fallacy and irreflexive blindness you describe. It’s as if the difference between Cubs and Sox fans had nothing to do with race – though it has to do with much more, of course. It’s as if racial strife in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Arizona, Texas, Cincinnati (Marge Schott, anyone?), Florida, Georgia, Philadelphia (now , um, WHY didn’t Flood want to go there?! The City of Brotherly Love where a Brother Can’t Get any Love.), DC, New York or Boston wasn’t reflected in their fans… Thanks.
PS: The Cubs look all kinds of set to be scary to the NL Central, that late-season surge was damned impressive.
Sweeping generalizations are rarely a worthwhile endeavor, and so it is indeed incorrect to slap the Ugly Backwards-Ass Racist label on the entire “Cardinal Nation” electorate.
But I think the more nuanced criticism of that specific fan base is that its own members have for decades now trumpeted that they are immune from the trend you so aptly pointed out: that every substantial collection of sports fans will have some faction of terrible people. Their self-applied “best fans in baseball” title is gauche at best and a complete fabrication at worst.
So there will certainly people giving into confirmation bias and use the “clash” between Cardinals fans and Ferguson protestors to bolster their perceptions of rampant racism in the fanbase and, more broadly, the region. But I prefer to view it as a further crumbling of the fictitious moral high ground the team’s supporters have sought to claim.
My sense, Alex, is that your comment conflates two other things. The “best fans in baseball” moniker – whether or not it is self-applied (do you have a source for that assertion?) – has never been anything but a reference to attendance (even in the lean years), the depth of the fan’s collective understanding of baseball and the frequency with which great performances by opponents are cheered. The idea that the descriptor referred to Cardinals having left, liberal, progressive, Democratic or simply “better” politics is just bizarre – have you heard Cardinals fans saying that their collective politics is even coherent, much less better than other teams’ fans?
Right. Down with sanctimony.
Additionally, at this point in the playoffs, a majority of fans have either lost their rooting interest when their team(s) lost, or never had one because their team(s) didn’t even make the playoffs. so it’s not like the distaste for the Cardinals is overriding any other fan loyalty for most people. Most people look for a rooting interest if they don’t have a natural geographic/historical one, and if hating the Cardinals for those jackass Darren WIlson-supporting fans is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
Also, go Cubs.
http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/10/doesnt-have-to-be-rape-to-suck.html
“The kind of people who create the cloud of performative morality that envelops the elite internet ”
Performative morality. Tell me you invented that phrase so I can properly attribute it to you. I’ve been calling it “posing for your Facebook friends” but your term is more artful and well, just better.
I’m not knowingly quoting anyone else, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone else had said it first.
What’s struck me anew is that the stadium crowds during the playoffs look like McCain-Palin rallies. Except Chavez Ravine.
-Native Marylander sporting wood the entire month.