NASCAR, The Luge, and Rollerball

Posted by The Falcon on 2/14/10 • Categorized as Blog, Culture War, Featured, Psychology, Sports, The Press

from LK: here’s the second piece by The Falcon.

The cry goes out as we look for someone to blame for the horrible luge fatality in Vancouver. Don’t look far. It’s us. We want faster, bigger, more dangerous in our sports and the huge cartels that run them are more than happy to oblige. Nascar lifted a bunch of regulations this year, including opening the holes up in the restrictor plates so the cars can go even faster. The latest numbers on restrictor plate racing at Daytona are a Vegas gambler’s wet dream. 10 out of the last 10 times the “big one” (Nascar’s pet name for huge crash) has occurred inside the final 8 laps of that race. All cars are required to have this plate on the carburetor, thus making them equal. Sounds fair, until you actually watch it and see the cars all bunched up the entire race- literally inches apart. The only way a car gets an advantage is if it has “help.” Help means another driver gets behind and pushes. Yes, pushes at 200mph…even around turns (see above regulations lift).

Interviews with drivers sound eerily similar to the Olympic athletes concerns about the brand new, bigger-than-Godzilla luge track in Vancouver. Carefully worded criticisms because, you see, Nascar like the IOC, is all powerful. Now haul in the major TV networks, and … you get the idea. But, again, it aint their fault! We want it like that! They are only doing business, and in business, you answer the desires of the consumer. We love reality TV and the so-called mixed martial arts shows. We love watching Trump dump on and fire people, Stern make fools of fools, and of course, Cowell smirking at the Idol “talent.” There is something about the ugly side of humankind that we are drawn to and today’s sports only gives legitimacy to our accident-chicken -hawking leering. We are living out what William Harrison dreamed up centuries ago… a Rollerball Nation. How come?

My guess is that after we all realized that America was on as shaky ground as say, The Congo, our internal anger systems kicked in. With anger being an offshoot of fear, and fear being an offshoot of helplessness, we’ve become wicked little boils on the neck of the Universe, ready to seep and pop. Luckily, there is also instilled in us a modicum of adherence to law or else it would be guns ablazzin’ ! Instead, we feast on High Def slaughter and, like in Vancouver the other day, tragedy.

And so today, Sunday and opening day for the Daytona 500, I will be feasting. Pizza, brew, Nascar, Flyers hockey, and if they are running the luge tonight, I’ll be there, baby. Hey, I didn’t say I was any different than the rest of us… I’m was just sayin’.