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World Cup South Africa

Read of the Day: Studies on Hysteria

You could go to World Cup 2010 and write about xenophobia, corruption, poverty and theft…and still think the tournament was a triumph for South Africa, lose your mind when Landon Donovan scored. ”The beauty and torture of soccer fandom, I came to appreciate during South Africa 2010, is the way the game simultaneously titillates very different parts of the mind. [W]hile Freud was not right about many things, he was right that the human mind is fundamentally conflicted…while it may not have across in my posts, I loved every single day of my trip to South Africa. Loved it.” (Andrew Guest/Pitch Invasion)

(Image credit: Axel Bührmann/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)

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Well Struck: Jack Warner’s Noose, Thomas Hobbes’ Favorite Side & the Real Group of Death

If the sports section had stories as good as these, I’d start reading it again…or at least the couple of bits around Wilbon and Boswell. Click through for mighty reads.

Read of the Day: The Inner Side of History’s Wind

“The sheer scale of the World Cup as an event probably smooths out our perceptions, and that’s also part of the memory problem: one game turns over onto the next so relentlessly that there’s no time to process it all, and even elevated moments start to feel like they’re part of an undifferentiated routine. One way or the other, these games sneaked up on me like an assassin who wanted a kiss…I hate this game, I love this game, I live only to forget.” (Brian Phillips/The Run of Play)

Is the World Cup a Turd Sandwich?

Is anyone else just a little discomfited by the mandatory Kumbayas to World Cup nirvana? “Everything about this tournament feels cold and inhuman to me. It feels like everyone is going through the motions and dancing around a giant — how do I say this? — turd sandwich…Having to watch Bono prance around on a stage while post-colonial third world teams labor impossibly against the debt-laden richer nations has convinced me that the 2010 World Cup exposes more about what’s broken in our world than what’s correct.” (Fake Sigi)

Against Sanctimonious World Cup Whining

FIFA is evil, the World Cup will compound South African inequality…yes, sorry, thanks, must be going, match coming on now. What the whiners forget is that every World Cup is proceeded by hand-wringing about violence, injustice, cronyism and charges of police-statism. And that the Cup provides host nations intangibles beyond the parameters of sound investment. And that it’s hardly the only human endeavor slight on reason and equity and drunk on utopian visions. “If people want to live in a world of illusion and self-deception, I’d prefer them to do it via football than any number of other things.” (Laurent Dubois/Soccer Politics-The Politics of Football)