I was watching the video involving Noam Chomsky entitled "Manufacturing Consent" (amazing how similar his thoughts are to those we had heard from Bernie Sanders) and heard one of his comments on sports. That struck a chord for me. As my friends know I'm more of an arts guy than a sports guy. I searched out Professor Chomsky's other comments on sports. I'm not sure that they are empirically valid but definitely food for thought. They also strike me as a little extreme especially as to jingoism (yes, I had to look up the meaning of it too!) but I think there is some basis to his thoughts around submission to authority, group cohesion and chauvinism. I decided to collect those quotes here so I'd have an easy place to reference them:
“One of the functions that things like professional sports play, in our society and others, is to offer an area to deflect people's attention from things that matter, so that the people in power can do what matters without public interference.”
― Noam Chomsky, The Chomsky Reader
“When I was in high school I asked myself at one point: "Why do I care if my high school's team wins the football game? I don't know anybody on the team, they have nothing to do with me... why am I here and applaud? It does not make any sense." But the point is, it does make sense: It's a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority and group cohesion behind leadership elements. In fact it's training in irrational jingoism. That's also a feature of competitive sports.”
― Noam Chomsky
“I got some funny reactions, a lot of irate reactions, as if I were somehow taking people's fun away from them. I have nothing against sports. I like to watch a good basketball game and that sort of thing. On the other hand, we have to recognise that the mass hysteria about spectator sports plays a significant role. First of all, spectator sports make people more passive, because you're not doing them; you're watching somebody doing them. Secondly, they engender jingoist and chauvinist attitudes, sometimes to quite an extreme degree. I saw something in the newspapers just a day or two ago about how high-school teams are now so antagonistic and passionately committed to winning at all costs that they had to abandon the standard handshake before or after the game. These kids can't even do civil things like greeting one another because they're ready to kill one another. It's spectator sports that engender those attitudes, particularly when they're designed to organise a community to be hysterically committed to their gladiators. That's very dangerous, and it has lots of deleterious effects.”
― Noam Chomsky, The Quotable Chomsky
