by Peter Löcke //
Let's not talk about politics, please.
I often hear sentences like that. Disenchantment with politics wherever you look and whoever you ask. Sometimes a feeling of fatalism overcomes me too. In moments like these, it works well to distract yourself with soccer. Turn on the TV, turn off your brain and finally stop thinking about the hard-to-digest topics of our time. This strategy must also work during the football-less winter break. I thought so. Wrong! All attempts to feed my brain with light sports food over the turn of the year ended with what felt like a stomach ulcer. The tour of stomach pains began with the Four Hills Tournament. Instead of the TV broadcast times I was hoping for, the Google search engine spat out a sexism debate. As the first search hit, Google immediately spat reproachfully in my toxic male face.
Equal Pay Gap! We finally need gender-equitable pay in ski jumping and in every sport in general!
Veni, vidi, vici! After googling, I clicked, I saw and I drowned. Reading the article immediately triggered an inner monologue of rage. No, damn it! We don't need an equal pay gap because it doesn't work in the reality of life. The different income of athletes depends on the different interest of spectators, sponsors, TV stations and other media. The more money there is in the respective economic cycle, the more ends up in the athlete's account. In most women's sports, there is less money in circulation. You can complain about that, but that's the way it is and it can't be regulated. Oh yes! What we also don't need in Germany are Anglicisms like gender pay gap.
Just not thinking about political issues? At least that didn't work for ski jumping at home. So it was off to New York for the World Blitz Chess Championships. Norway's Magnus Carlsen faced Russia's Nepomniashchi, or Nepo for short, in the final. I find a live stream on the internet and am full of anticipation. After all, unlike ski jumping, I also know something about chess. Or so I thought. Wrong!
Hands race across the board, moving the pieces every second. I can only see the live chessboard in a small window, with other windows next to it in which experts and AI tell me which chess moves would have been better. Thanks to artificial intelligence, the parallel chat agrees that such mistakes should never happen to the best chess players in the world. There is also a consensus that both finalists are wrongly in the final. After all, Magnus Carlsen is wearing an illegal pair of jeans, that violates the dress code. The Russian's mistake is to be Russian. So Nepo is violating the world order. It's just the hectic pace that annoys me. The final was more like an MTV video clip than a chess game. I ask myself where this is going and the experts immediately give me an answer. The most extreme form of blitz chess is called Armageddon. That can't be a coincidence.
Finally time to stop thinking about politics and distract myself with sport? On Friday evening, I made one last desperate attempt. Back from New York, I made my way to London. Off to the Ally Pally, off to Alexandra Palace in England's capital. The final of the World Darts Championship was taking place there.
Nothing could be more apolitical than darts. At the Ally Pally, the atmosphere is somewhere between Ballermann and beer tent. Here I am human, here I am allowed to be. The modern gladiators are tattooed up to their armpits and all have a fighting name. I immediately recognize the Dutchman Michael van Gerwen, stage name Mighty Mike. His opponent in the final is unknown to me as a semi-literate darts fan. The room helps me and chants his name.
Hitler! Hitler! Hitler!
My shock only lasted a few seconds. I must have heard wrong and yes, I had heard wrong. Littler! The good man's name is Littler, first name Luke. To reassure myself, I had simply fallen into a phonetic trap. Now I would like to write that the rest of the evening was relaxed. Fiddlesticks, because of course Luke Littler also goes by a fighting name. He is also known as "the Nuke". Nuke is an English abbreviation for "nuclear weapon". The nickname is supposed to symbolize Littler's ability to destroy his opponents as precisely as a nuclear weapon. Somehow, after this information, I didn't feel like watching dart throwing anymore.
Let me summarize. Sexism & gender debates, Anglicisms, artificial intelligence, the evil Russian, Armageddon and nuclear war. I thought about these political topics because I simply didn't want to think about political topics.
The next column will again be dedicated to a political topic. After many speeches in the Bundestag, interviews and contributions on X, I think so anyway:
Articles identified by name do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the publisher.
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3 Responses
In our house, when the master of the house turns on the TV, sport comes on. ALWAYS.
This had the same effect on me a few days ago, but I have always
„Hitler“ gehört , wurde dann aber aufgeklärt.Daß er den Kampfnamen „Nuke“ trägt kann man wohl einer gewissen jugendlichen Unbedarftheit zuschreiben.
Women's ski jumping was on yesterday afternoon. As a guest, a young female member of our family brought up the much-cited gender pay gap in sport.
If the above article had been online 24 hours earlier, I could have saved myself my lecture.
Bread and circuses always work, and you can throw in a bit of agitation on the side. Why, for example, are there no Russians competing in many sports, but there are Ukrainians and Israelis? This question is surely permissible. You certainly won't get an answer, at least a plausible or honest one. At best, you will be denigrated as a Nazi or an enemy of a non-existent democracy.
Sport is the continuation of politics by other means. Sport is the circus of modern times to distract the masses. Don't believe that the endlessly triggered and "scandal-ridden" citizen of the 21st century can find peace in sport. No, your brain must never be allowed to rest! That's why figure skating is as good as canceled. Too much rest, too much beauty. You shouldn't be allowed a second to think. No breaking out of the beaten track of the global media mafia on behalf of power. Never and nowhere. The message is hammered relentlessly into your brain: We are the good guys! No matter what we do! If you see doublespeak and double standards, you see wrong. We determine what the world is. The others are the bad guys. We have to mobilize against them. Always and everywhere. Even in sport. Our domination is total. More total than anything before. - Never think you can escape us. - If I look around the community: lo and behold, it's working. People are arguing like tinkers about green or blue. But the Overton window remains closed for the important questions!