A Souring Sensation

When I was growing up in Nashville the people living next to our house were rabid fans of the University of Tennessee. As anyone who’s met a UT fan can assure you, there is something about such fans that can go well beyond mere mania. My neighbors were so incredibly excited about their boys in orange that they have forever turned me against my native state’s most prominent college team. Having their fight song Rocky Top screamed at you is somehow not endearing.

It’s not as though I now intellectually believe that there is something wrong with the Volunteers. They are neither more nor less moral a sports franchise than any of the other “amateur” athletes. But after years of their garish insistence on the superiority of all things that lovely shade of orange I cannot emotionally bring myself to side with them. The obnoxiousness of that advocacy has forever soured UT in my mind.

Years later I encountered another sort of fan. This kind is not nearly so annoying but still manages to turn my allegiance away from the focus of their team-loyalty. It’s like this. Have you ever been watching a game with some friends where you go into it not caring who wins? You could be just as easily persuaded to go along with your friends as to root to the other guy. Yet the more you listen to your buds, the more you want the other guy to win.

I remember one particular time watching a college basketball game. Neither team was “mine” so I was content (at first) at least not to cheer against my friends. Tragically, my resilience was not strong enough to withstand the temptation. By the end of the game I was actively going for the other team. Unlike my UT fanatics these friends weren’t throwing their team colors in my face or even pressuring me to join them.

The problem this time was the unhinged irrationality coming from people who I could otherwise count on for their solid sensibility. Every time a ref would make a call in their favor was “about time!” since it was obviously only their due. Every time that same ref made a call against their team it was just as obviously a bad call flowing from the ref’s bias. My otherwise rational friends were sincerely convinced that the powers that be were actively working to prevent their team from winning.

From my neutral perspective I found this baffling. Despite their insistence to the contrary there simply was no greater amount of calls going against their team than those going for them. I simply could not bring myself to support their guys when they had such ephemeral reasons for doing so. If going for that team left my friends bereft of their faculties I didn’t think that was the course for me.

This sort of counter reaction spills out from sporting events into the real world combat of politics. Jogging through my neighborhood I have repeatedly come across a van that I really wish wasn’t there. Despite being several hundred miles north of the Mason-Dixon Line this vehicle sports a collection of Confederate flags. Whatever positive connotations the Rebel flag might have in some people’s minds there is a far more common negative feeling associated with it thanks to the boys in the KKK. For most Americans this flag is connected with ignorance and hatred.

If this were all the van was emblazoned with then it would simply be a matter of either a racist or someone unaware that everyone around him thinks he is a racist. Unfortunately for my political sympathies, this guy also has bumper stickers supporting the party and some of the particular candidates that I usually go for. I am sorely tempted to scrape off the pro-Republican stickers since I don’t want the people in this largely Hispanic neighborhood to think that to be conservative is to be racist. This guy’s obnoxiousness, just as with the UT fans, would be enough to keep me from voting his way had I not my own reasons for going for the GOP.

This souring sensation also explains part of my opposition to my Senator’s quest for the Presidency. Like with my otherwise reasonable sports fan friends, I am disturbed by the nature of some of my friends support for Obama. It is not so much that they give me reasons for doing so that I then disagree with as much as it is as they offer so little reason for supporting him in the first place.

I have heard all sorts of reasons why he should get the top job, but none of them has any specific substance to them. All I hear are platitudes about how great a communicator he is, or what a great moment it would be to have an African-American in the White House or how we all need to believe in hope. No one goes into any detail about how his words of hope and change are going be translated from rhetoric into reality. No one seems to think its important that they can’t cite anything he has done in the past as proof of what he can and will do in the future.

People talk about how he is not a part of the DC political machine, but they don’t notice that he’s been in thick with the Chicago machine. (I hope I don’t have to explain how Chicago stands in terms of political sanctity.) People talk about how he is above partisan politics and will be his own man, yet they fail to mention that his voting record shows him voting as entirely allied with one party. People say anything will be better than what we have now, but they don’t explain how this golden age is to be achieved.

A friend of mine who was for the Senator long before it was popular to do so was talking to me back at Christmas. With glowing excitement he told me of a mass message he received from the campaign. Obama, his wife, and their children were shown sitting by a warm fire. After a few holiday greetings from the candidate, the two kids then in turn said, “Merry Christmas” and “Happy Holidays.”

My friend was so enthusiastic about the cleverness of the message that for a moment I thought I’d missed something. I thought that surely my friend was not being so carried away by something no more clever than found on a greeting card. But that was it. There was nothing else. Like anyone else infatuated he had seen something amazing in the innocuous.

I can fully understand not wanting to vote for the Republicans. If I thought there was a worthwhile alternative who could actually get elected I just might do the same thing. What I do not understand is the enthusiasm of Obama’s fans. He is indeed charming and great at giving speeches that convey all sorts of happy feelings. He has a knack for getting you to want to please him. However, I’d like more reason to vote for someone to be the most powerful man in the world more substantial than a slightly more sophisticated version of “He’s just so dreamy!”