2nd September, 2008

MICAH TILLMAN

United States

I’ll tell you why you lost the gold to us in Olympic women’s basketball: your uniforms were hideous.

First of all, what did those colors have to do with Australia? And second: Spandex?! Really? In basketball?

PICTURE: RAWKU5 (www.sxc.hu) "What has become more and more disturbing to me recently is how such “trash talk” as the above seems to be taken seriously in parts of life outside of sports."

In swimming or racing sports, maybe. But spandex anywhere else went out of style with hair metal in the 80’s. Surely you noticed.

What has become more and more disturbing to me recently is how such “trash talk” as the above seems to be taken seriously in parts of life outside of sports.

For instance, you notice how I said “you” lost to “us.” This is, of course, completely false. Some people from my country beat some people from your country. And neither you nor I had anything to do with choosing “our” teams’ uniforms.

Everyone knows this, so usually sports trash-talk is taken with a grain of salt and a bit of jocularity. But in politics, it’s taken completely seriously (even though the words used are usually “invaded,” “oppressed,” “slaughtered,” and so on, rather than simply “beat” and “won/lost”). And people get killed over it.

The Russia-Georgia situation (for instance) has been worrying and confusing us Americans for the past couple weeks (especially since we have a state here in the US named “Georgia”), even as we’ve been celebrating “our” victories at the Olympics.

Michael Phelps has been an especially huge story. And given the fact that Mr Phelps and I live in the same state (he’s just up I-95 from me in Baltimore), that automatically makes me a winner.

Right?

The other thing that’s been keeping us busy is trying to guess whom Obama and McCain will choose as their running-mates.

Word finally came today (it’s Saturday as I write this) that Obama has chosen Delaware Senator Joe Biden.

So I’m feeling even more special than usual. Delaware, you see, is just up I-95 from me too. In fact, my wife is from there, and I spent a lot of my youth playing concerts, doing homeschool group activities, and attending church there.

I even graduated high school (as a homeschooler) with a Delaware diploma.

But if you can’t picture where Delaware is (Delawarians often wear t-shirts that say, “Dela-where?”), think of Fight Club. It takes place in Delaware, for the most part, because that’s where all the major credit card companies seem to have their headquarters. (You know the scene at the end where all the buildings are collapsing? That’s Wilmington, in the northern part of Delaware.)

Even though I’m happy that, Biden, a quasi-“hometown boy,” has finally made good, I’m in a bit of shock that Obama chose him.

Biden is famous for making questionable comments involving race, you see. One of them earlier in this campaign season was even about Obama.

And with Obama himself saying strange things recently about abortion, you’d think he would have wanted someone safer.

But evidently not.

Obama and McCain were at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency. You’ve no doubt heard of Warren (the Purpose Driven Life guy); he asked both candidates a series of questions which Christians would particularly find relevant.

To the question, “[A]t what point does a baby get human rights, in your view?”, Obama responded, “Well, you know, I think that whether you’re looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade".

Notice that the question wasn’t about when life begins, but when rights begin.

Even future generations which do not now exist already have rights (that’s one reason people get worked up about the environment and the national debt here in America), and people have rights even after they’re dead (you can’t “desecrate a corpse” for instance).

So for such a fascinating question, Obama’s “answer” was more than dissatisfying.

And then there’s been a growing controversy about Obama’s voting against a bill to protect babies who survive attempted abortions.

Needless to say, Obama isn’t winning points with conservative Christians here in the states.

The question is, therefore, whether this week’s Democrat National Convention (where the Democrats will officially nominate Obama for president) and Obama’s finally choosing a VP will give him enough positive press coverage to outweigh the negativity.

Micah Tillman is a lecturer in the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America, and the curator of the WEeding Awards.

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