Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines patriotism as:
Pa·tri·ot·ism: love for or devotion to one's country.
I prefer Oscar Wilde's definition:
"Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious."
Last night I had a surreal experience. Before I get to that let me explain the back story.
When 9/11 happened I lived in Cedar Rapids and worked at Buffalo Wild Wings. Every Thursday was Karaoke night. It was a fun time with big rowdy groups, and always got a little crazy. One night a few months after 9/11 things seemed well on there way to the usual chaos. Then a strange thing happened. A little boy, six years old, got up to sing. He perched on a bar stool and soulfully belted out Lee Greenwood's "Proud To Be An American". I dutifully walked around trying to get drink orders, but no one spoke. When I asked people if they needed anything they would just lift a finger, a silent shh on their lips. Some were openly crying. I finally just stopped and watched, wondering why I wasn't as moved as everyone else clearly was. When he finished the crowd erupted, then things got back to normal.
Seven years later I'm back at Buffalo Wild Wings, this time just a customer. I of course want to watch baseball. Everyone else, it seems, is there for the Olympics. Groups of men in their twenties, another in their late thirties are suddenly experts on gymnastics, and can tell a breaststroke from a freestyle. The whole place erupts when America does well, and more disturbingly, when another country does poorly. These are guys that probably never went to their daughters ballet recitals, yet something brings them out on a Tuesday night to cheer for people they had never met, the only connection being that they happen to exist in the same country.
Am I the only one that doesn't get this? And wouldn't it have been more patriotic to be cheering for what I was watching, good old American baseball?
2 comments:
It's so against the spirit of the Olympics - putting things aside and coming together - to cheer when others do poorly. I've watched the Olympics, but only events I was interested in before they were taking place in Beijing. Those guys clearly missed the point.
And there are so many tv's in that place. Couldn't they spare one for baseball!?
There were a few smaller ones on baseball. It was just odd to see everyone so into the Olympics.
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