The Boys in Brazil
World War once, shame on you. World War twice, Germany is forever evil. This is while placing to the side the worst thing they ever did, arguably, the worst thing any country ever did in the history of awful things being done. They’re historically the most evil country before that and the holocaust just makes it no longer even a competition.
Kinda like 7-1.
With all that Brazil suffered before the World Cup, because of the World Cup, it’s pretty hard to make the results of a single game sting the most. That’s the Germans for you. They just keep coming.
According to polls, a significant portion of America was rooting for Germany. More than five times the amount of Americans rooting for France reported that they were cheering on Germany. France, if you remember, gave us the Statue of Liberty and before that our very independence by fighting a concurrent war against England and joining us in a military alliance that along with the supplies and intelligence they sent us allowed our ragtag bunch to defeat the divided red coats and become America in the first place. Germany, if you remember, gave the world the business on multiple occasions, tried to conquer/ruin everything and coldly murdered two thirds of all the Jews living in Europe. Not to sound xenophobic and unforgiving, but WTF, dude? That can’t be your favorite country.
Many of you hate Lebron James. I’ve heard you. You hate him because he told you, on a charitable special that raised millions for kids, that he was leaving the state he was born in to play basketball in a state with a nice beach. You hate him for that and you expect me to believe you. It’s not because he’s rich and gifted and famous. You hate him because his means of telling you that he wanted to play for another team, was, to your mind, less than ideal.
Many of you hate Justin Bieber. I’ve heard you. You hate him because he acts like a douchebag. You hate him because he drives drunk and uses racial slurs and seems to have a giant ego. It’s not because he’s rich and gifted and famous. The problem is that many of you have hated him for years. Years before the douche-baggery and drunk-driving and idiotic jokes. When he was just a young absurdly popular singer, you hated him already. You told me so.
Many of hate Will Smith’s son, Jaden. I’ve heard you. You hate him because… It’s not because he’s rich and gifted and famous, it’s… oh right, it's because he’s Will Smith’s son and Will Smith, in a virtuoso life performance that the historians will probably be unpacking centuries from now, has given you precious few reasons to hate him. You want to but you… just… can’t… quite… get a grip.
I hate Germany. As a concept. In sports. And really just for the last two World Cup games. I’ve never been there. One of my closest friends used to live there and she loved it. My surname is German. I, thus, assume that if I bothered to check, I have some percentage of German ancestry. I have German friends and occasionally enjoy eating at a German restaurant. What I said about Germany above is absurd. A lot of it. But that’s a big part of sports: riling yourself up to feel something in the context of a trivial entertaining contest. I felt genuinely bad for Brazil and saw irony in the fact that it was Germany who brought misery upon the soccer-loving fans of their country. I thought about the stereotype of cold, German precision and relished the idea that it could be foiled by Messi-ness. I rooted hard for Argentina to defeat Germany. It didn’t happen and now that the contest is over, I say: good for Germany and I hope the good people there are happy and dancing in the streets. I never really hated Germany much like none of the Lebron-haters you know actually hate him. They’d hate him right up to the point that he was close by and they had a chance to take a picture with him. Unless, he was too busy to pose, then they’d hate him more.
Rational hate and spite can be helpfull motivating forces in life. Irrational hate is just a waste of time that sucks energy away from more meaningful pursuits. Sports hate is fine in small doses, just keep it in check. It’s just sports for Gods sake. And music. And movies. Rile up if you want, if it helps you to feel something. But rile down. Escapism is a noble good but just remember when you escape back to check the silly emotional baggage at the door. That is, of course, unless you find yourself hating Ben Roethlisberger. That you can hold on to. The man is a walking pile of excrement not because he’s rich and gifted and famous but because if you buy his version of the events of his second rape accusation, it was still rape. This should never be held against his descendants but right now rooting against Roethlisberger is as logical as rooting against Germany. In the ‘40s.