While we’re kvetching about football…I wrote a column for the previous-to-current Free Inquiry about my dislike of the sport and its cult. (US football this is, not association football aka soccer.)

What’s so annoying about it is the crackpot assumption that everyone is wildly excited about football when after all sport is only one branch of human activity, and football is only one branch of sport. I, for one, like the other football, a.k.a. soccer, and then there is lacrosse, jai alai, bowls, darts, bocce. . . . There are many sports, and I dislike the assumption that in America we’re all supposed to share the enthusiasm for American football. I dislike the social bullying aspect of it, just as

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A Kate Smurthwaite gig tomorrow at Goldsmiths College –

Kate Smurthwaite will be performing her stand up show Leftie Cockwomble for all to enjoy! The show is about free speech, language and the media with some very interesting views on the Daily Mail and Frankie Boyle…
Doors 7pm for 8pm start!

The show is FREE for Goldsmiths Comedy Society members and the Feminist Society*

£4 OTD for general public

*This is only valid if you have paid your membership and you will be asked for your student number OTD

Monday 02 February 2015

7pm – 11pm

Oh wait. It’s off.

What? Why??

Because of bullshit, that’s why. Kate posted the “explanation” publicly on Facebook.

Comedian Kate Smurthwaite has had

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More celebration of Super Bowl Day by attacking the sacred institution of Murkan Football. Josh Spokes is on a tear on the subject, thanks to people treating football fandom as some sort of marginalized minority identity. Friends are making informative comments on his on-a-tear posts, and I sought and got permission to quote a couple.

Hope Stansfield:

Here’s the thing: I grew up in a rural and impoverished town in the Midwest. Football was a cultural juggernaut. It was a tool the privileged and powerful in that town used to demonstrate and exact their dominance, while also paying lip service to the idea that they weren’t viciously racist and bigoted – after all, if you could play football and not

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It’s Super Bowl day. Normally I get to ignore this, which is how I like it, but ignoring it is not possible this year as it was not possible last year, because the team based in the city where I live is in it, as it was last year. In the god damn Super Bowl. The Seattle team is in it, for the second year in a row, and “the fans” won’t let anyone forget it. There are footballteam-patriotism decals EVERYWHERE – literally. You can’t go anywhere on foot or by bus or car without seeing them constantly. They’re hung in windows, on the external walls of buildings, on car antennas; they’re on gigantic flags flown from the Space Needle, … Read the rest

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Plain? Really? I gotta tell you, I don’t see it. Unless the standard is

1. the most gorgeous woman on earth
2. all other women

I don’t see how Colleen McCullough qualifies as “plain.”

We already know I don’t consider it necessary to announce in news items about women that they are or are not “plain” in the first place, but even putting that aside for the moment ad arguendo, I still don’t see how Colleen McCullough qualifies as “plain.”

Jezebel shares this photo:

I.don’t.see.the.plain.

The Huffington Post UK:

Seriously? Who looks at that and thinks “plain”?

She aged well, too. Check out the photo by Quentin Jones for the SMH in 2013. Take a quick look at … Read the rest

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