The Culture of In-Between

We’re back, with a ground-breaking theoretical discovery that has brought us one step closer to understanding the American Je Ne Sais Quoi. The study draws on a wealth of empirical data – including first-hand observations of President Obama – gathered recently at two major American sporting events: the clash between two titans of American college basketball, the Georgetown Hoyas and Duke Devils, and the Superbowl XLIV between the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints.

From left to right: Colt, Saint

The theory, in brief, holds that the American condition is best described as, and depends on, a Culture of In-Between.

To see why this is true, consider sporting events in the US, which are fundamentally a celebration of three things: (1) the unmatched American capacity for collective sensory overstimulation; (2) American technological supremacy; and (3) core American values, like family, God, support for the military, and hard work.

I turn first to America’s sensory overstimulation, which is essentially a collective and self-inflicted social Attention Deficit Disorder. According to the experts at www.add.org, “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD) is a condition resulting in symptoms of inability to maintain attention, impulsive behaviors and/or motor restlessness.”

ADHD Self-Test

At sporting events, Mass-ADHD is produced in a variety of ways. At the GU-Duke game, for example, spectators were exposed to a complex arrangement of oversized, brightly flashing neon scoreboards – including the central neon-information-cube shown below, that show everything from individual player statistics over Join The Army ads to the ubiquitous – and unnecessary –  ‘MAKE SOME NOISE’ cue.

Watch yourself watch the game on the cube.

Moreover, throughout the game and during its many (!) interruptions, a platoon of cheerleaders vie for attention like 6-year olds at their grandparents’ dinner party, bobbing up and down, performing handstands and pyramids, all the while shaking glittery pompoms that magically reflect and amplify the neon light from the scoreboards, creating optimal conditions for an ADHD-Epilepsy symbiosis.

See this for a closer insight into Texan cheerleading practices and why a high school operations manager feels ‘stiff all over’ at 55:

Finally, there are the intra-game gimmicks, designed to pass the time during myriad substitutions, coach-called or media time-outs, and a half-time that seems more like a half-life. The gimmicks include a “Burrito Dash”, involving the launch of hot burritos into the crowds, the “Shirt Gun”, a maneuver during which free T-shirts are fired into the crowd with a 15cm (!) caliber air gun with 9 (!!!) nozzles, the “Dress Like a Hoya” competition, which has two randomly selected infants race to dress in full-scale basketball gear and score a hoop.

Here is The Gun, including complementary mass-ADHD-inducing measures:

Finally, there is my personal favorite: The Devouring. The Devouring involves the Georgetown mascot, Jack, an English Bulldog who lives with a Professor in the Department of Theology. Jack’s purpose in life is to chase onto the court after a small cardboard box of the same color as the opposing team’s jerseys and shred it to pieces – a carnal ritual that is met with loud grunting and jeering from the stands.

Here’s The Devouring from a game against Syracuse (orange):

American technological supremacy, second, is displayed and celebrated as an integral component of the aforementioned overstimulation machinery. It can take several forms, including the rapid assembly and deconstruction of a gigantic, pulsing neon rock-stage during the Superbowl intermission, or the giant LCD-cube that hangs above basketball courts and provides a continuous and overwhelming flow of information as well as revolving imagery.

The display and reaffirmation of core American values, finally, come to the fore in all thse aspects of public sport appreciation. The ubiquitous national anthem and salute to the armed forces, which mark the beginning of sporting events and their corollary distractions, is the most obvious example. Meanwhile, the appearance of the President and his staff at the Georgetown-Duke game, though deliberately low-key, provides further evidence of the role of sporting events and venues as a repository of American identity (it also reinforced the collective ADHD by giving rise to a new form of in-between-based entertainment: Obama-spotting).

Obama & Biden, bored, at Georgetown vs. Duke

In fact, the flamboyant and explicit display of American core values during sporting events makes them an excellent occasion – and, to my knowledge, the only such occasion in the industrialized West – for witnessing what Rousseau termed the ‘civic religion’; a quasi-religious bond between citizens and the state that is reflected in a people’s public conduct and is, according to Rousseau, a prerequisite for any viable form of collective government.

J.J. Rousseau

What is most significant about these three celebratory and self-affirmational aspects of American sporting events, however, is not their content; it is their form. They take place in-between the time-outs, halves, thirds or quarters of the ostensible purpose of sporting events (the game itself). The processes described above unravel between work, leisure and learning – they are the cement that binds the bricks of American identity together into a whole.

This observation – that what really matters happens in-between what purportedly matters– extends beyond sporting events into other important areas of American life.

Long-distance automotive travel, for example, is not just a way of dealing with this country’s size. It provides the context for participating in the far more significant activities of, say, drive-in dining or using one of the multiple gadgets American cars typically feature, like elaborate in-built entertainment suites or automatic cruise control.

Drive-In Dining, Old School

Likewise, the importance of Jazz for the American civic order does not derive from the orchestrated unity of sound that classical music seeks to achieve and Europeans find so appealing; rather, as I was recently realized at a jazz gig in the legendeary and aptly-named Preservation Hall of New Orleans, it is the opportunity to applaud and express joy collectively between the solos and bridges that really gets Americans going.

Preservation Hall, New Orleans

Consider also the often-misunderstood act of consumption. Critics of American consumer culture –from the post-modern hippies in Berlin to the grenade-launching jihadists in the Swat Valley – routinely fail to appreciate what it is about consumption that makes Americans so beholden to it.

It is not that owning more stuff makes them happier – as the growing body of ‘happiness research’ reveals, the opposite is true. Rather, it is the in-between of consumption that matters most. The pre-shoe-shopping and post-electronics-buying coffee or burger matter more than the new Nikes or that iPad. In restaurants, friendly service in-between the courses makes Americans happier than a great meal ever will. Choosing from hundreds of varieties of cereal in a Wal-Mart pleases the median American more than paying for that cereal or eating it the next morning (note: Europeans have been known to respond to superabundant cereal selections with a more individualized version of the ADHD-Epilepsy condition described above).

Finally, consider the incarnate epitome of American culture, an American rock in the tide of globalized, culinary change and, quite literally, the fuel that keeps The Free And Brave running: the hamburger.

The Essential In-between Artefact

What matters about this quintessential American institution is not the bun, the salad, the ketchup, or the fries. It is the meat in the middle, the Pattie in-between.

This analysis permits no other conclusion but that America is best understood as, and depends on, the Culture of In-Between. Any attempt to understand the United States must begin by understanding what goes on in-between everything else.

Red Squirrel, Dead Squirrel

If President Obama is right, this year’s No. 1 threat consists of unconnected dots. Fortunately, we at unitedstatesofaustria.com have been connecting dots since 2009. In this post, we analyse dots that connect the extinction of red squirrels to Austrian Social Democracy’s flirt with right-wing policies.

New Year, New Threats

Donald Rumsfeld once observed that threats may be known knowns, known unknowns, or unknown unknowns.

This analysis was ridiculed, at the time, for its apparent absurdity. “How can there be known unknowns?” quipped the knowitalls. In fact, known unknowns are everywhere. You know when you’re sick even if you don’t know whether it’s H1N1 or the regular Flu.

Rumsfeld’s mistake lies in the opposite direction. Had he consulted a trained logician like myself, Rumsfeld could have added the missing link to his list – unknown knowns.

Unknown knowns are instances of cognitive dissonance – social science speak for plain stupidity. As Obama put it after the last unknown known almost blew up a plane over Detroit, unknown knowns occur when we “fail to connect the dots.” The US Intelligence Community knew it was coming, except that… they didn’t see it coming.

(Americans are inventive, though, and the cognitive training exercise below has already been disseminated to secret service operatives across the globe to ensure appropriate dot-connection in the future.)

CIA Intelligence Assessment Exercize 1 - Nigerian Insurgents, 01/2010

Politics is full of unknown knowns. Here is Gordon Brown, unknowing the known:

Gordon Brown knew 2 years ago that he will lose the coming 2010 election because of his own failure to renew New Labour (yes, a New New Labour is needed) and resign. What did he do about it? As with most unknown knowns: nothing.

Austrian Social Democracy’s Paradox: Leftist Xenophobia

By many accounts, Austrian Social Democracy faces a similar challenge: unelectability. In response, it has resorted to the peculiar and paradoxical rescue strategy of saving Social Democracy by swerving to the right.

Reconstructing the logic behind this strategy – which many leftist Social Democrats would rather see abandoned – should be the first step for those out to dismantle it. This requires knowing the known, i.e. connecting the dots.

The dots are (i) the results of our own vienna-DC connection Kreisky/Reagan poll (October 2009) and (ii) cutting-edge research on the consequences of trans-atlantic squirrel diasporas.

Kreisky/Reagan Poll Evaluation

Our October attractiveness poll has Reagan at 71% versus Kreisky’s measly 29%. The result is disappointing for some, like myself, because I thought my readers would see through Reagan’s hat trick.

However, that 7 of 10 readers fall for a hat is evidence of a deeper, reactionary shift in contemporary public opinion. The result shows that, even after the recent financial melt-down, the values and policies embedded in Reagan’s cowboy hat (neo-liberalism,  privatization, deregulated financial markets) resonate with voters. More so, at least, than the ideology behind Kreisky’s public-health insurance financed horn-rimmed glasses (liberty, equality, solidarity).

Red Squirrel, Dead Squirrel!

Further evidence of the pressure on Europe’s left by America’s economic right – even after the recession – is the crowding out of the Red European Squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris) by the American Grey Squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis), depicted below.

Sciurus vulgaris: The Red European Squirrel

In the seminal article “Interspecific competition between native Eurasian red squirrels and alien grey squirrels: does resource partitioning occur?” published in Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology, Wauters  et al (2002) conclude that “the Eastern Gray Squirrel tends to be larger and stronger than the Red Squirrel and has been shown to have a greater ability to store fat for the winter. The squirrel can therefore compete more effectively for a larger share of the available food, resulting in relatively lower survival and breeding rates among the Red Squirrel.”

Sciurus carolinensis: The Grey US Squirrel

Put simply: red squirrels are, increasingly, dead squirrels.

What does this mean for Austrian Social Democracy? Squirrels are perceived on a very basic level – as our natural allies in a hunter-gatherer state of nature. Austrians have grown accustomed to red squirrels over millenia of gathering nuts in the woods and climbing the trees to harvest fruit. When, all of a sudden, the red squirrel is threatened in its peaceful co-existence with us by the grey squirrel, one question worries us most: Who’s next?

Austria has a deeper subconscious than most other nations (which is why Freud studied us and not the Australians). Deep down, we sense that our fate will be that of our red rodent allies. This fear explains the barrage of right-wing, anti-muslim, xenophobic propaganda that will be unleashed, with renewed zest, in 2010.

Sigmund Freud

The public’s contradictory Reagan-loving and grey squirrel-fearing views explain current Social Democratic paradoxical strategy. The displacement of red by grey squirrels has been re-framed as an ideological watershed: The neo-liberal, Reaganite, grey squirrel  is crowding out the leftist, Social Democratic, red squirrel.

The idea is to make Austrians realize  – as Tony Judt does, less xenophobically, in his brilliant ‘What’s Living and What’s Dead With Social Democracy?‘ (New York Review, 12/2009) – that  to throw out Social Democracy is to throw out the baby with the bath water. Once they have done so, a xenophobic impulse can be used to salvage Social Democracy’s legacy in Austria.

It’s the squirrels, stupid!

This is neither a venue for detailed historical analysis nor for concrete policy proposals (some suggestions may appear on the German platform later), but for lucid analysis.

We’ve connected the dots. Squirrel diaspora and cowboyism are two perceived contributors of Social Democracy’s future undoing. The fate of Social Democracy appears inseparably tied to that of the red squirrel. One group argues that to save Social Democracy in Austria, we must save those squirrels. The other group must argue for knowing the known: that cowboy hats don’t matter and saving red squirrels really won’t save Social Democracy. The first group has moved; the second should do the same.

Politik als Klingelton: Superpraktikanten und personelle Perspektivlosigkeit

Wie der Superpraktikant die personelle Perspektivlosigkeit Österreichischer Politik banalisiert.

Dass Österreichs Politik nur begrenzt personell erneuerungsfähig ist, ist bekannt. Ebenso geläufig sind die Versuche Österreichischer Politiker, Jugend zu suggerieren wo in Wahrheit Alter regiert. Die enden oft peinlich, etwa wenn Landtagsabgeordnete auf Youtube Weidegatterbestimmungen verteidigen oder ungelenke Parteifunktionäre im Wahlkampf tweeten wie der Hirschbraten schmeckt.

Meist bleiben solche politgeriatrischen Kommunikationsmanöver ebenso erfolglos wie unbemerkt, und daher harmlos. In 5 Tagen endet jedoch die erste Phase eines bemerkenswerten Versuchs, Österreichs Jugendlichen die fortgeschrittene politische Verkrustung als Krustenweckerl zu servieren und dabei die personelle Perspektivlosigkeit unserer Politik zu banalisieren.

Der Superpraktikant - ÖVP im Obama-blau

Seit sechs Wochen lockt eine in Obama-blau gehaltene Billigwebseite der ÖVP mit dem „begehrtesten Praktikum des Landes.“ In einer online Publikumswahl können sich Jung und Alt, aber bitte vor allem Jung, um „eine Woche an der Seite von Josef Pröll“ bewerben, inklusive Aprés-Pröll Skiurlaub im alpinen Hochriegel-Luxus.

Der für ÖVP-Verhältnisse ungewöhnlich basisdemokratische Prozess (vgl. dazu die Bestellung der Wiener Landesparteiführung) ist durch ein Juryurteil abgesichert, wodurch subversive Bewerbungen in erster Instanz unterbunden werden können. Schließlich ist das Vorhaben des derzeit erstgereihten Elektrorollstuhlfahrers Martin Habacher, den Finanzminister zwecks „Perspektivwechsel“ eine Woche lang in einem ergonomisch angepassten Rollstuhl herum schieben zu lassen, angesichts des ministerialen Leibesumfangs fiskal frivol. Ebenso gefährlich wäre es, die zweit-gereihte Falter-Journalistin Toth zum Schnitzelschupfen beim Bauernbund zu lassen.

PR-technisch ist die Inszenierung gelungen. Schade, nur, dass sich die ÖVP von Obama nur das Blau abgeschaut hat. Was man nämlich aus der Aktion über das Verhältnis einer Österreichischen Regierungspartei zum Thema Personalpolitik lernen kann ist ernüchternd.

Mit großen Buchstaben und mitleiderregenden Videos fragt die Superpraktikanten-Homepage, ob Jugendliche das „begehrteste Praktikum des Landes,“ „eine Woche in die Faszinierende Welt der Politik eintauchen” und „eine Woche an der Seite von Josef Pröll verbringen” wollen.

Diese Fragestellung stellt einen politischen Betrieb bloß, der mit herabgelassenen Hosen vor Diskotheken um Aufmerksamkeit buhlt.

Erstens täuscht man hier mit spaßigem Castingjargon darüber hinweg, dass es keine ernsthafte politische Personalpolitik gibt. Im Bereich der Nachwuchsarbeit sind sowohl Österreichs Großparteien wie auch der öffentliche Dienst zurückgeblieben. Im öffentlichen Dienst gibt es weder strukturierte Praktika noch transparente, beschleunigte Bewerbungsverfahren um hochqualifizierten Jungakademikern  den Dienst an der Öffentlichkeit schmackhaft zu machen. Modelle hierfür wären etwa der Fast-Track des Civil Service in England oder das Presidential Management Fellowship in den USA. Bis auf ein ausbeuterisches „Traineeship“ im Finanzministerium, das mit eineinhalb Jahren bei mickrigem Lohn wohl kaum Ausnahmetalente anlockt, sind Praktika nach wie vor Erbrecht. In den Parteien verlässt man sich lieber auf brave Parteijünglinge die zu dankbar sind um aufzumucken.

Zweitens vermarktet der Superpraktikant politisches Engagement als einwöchige Glamourerfahrung. Das ist besorgniserregend, denn die einzige nachhaltige Leistung des bislang ersten Österreichischen Glamourpolitikers – Karl Heinz Grasser – war es, quer durch den öffentlichen Sektor eine Spur von Finanzverbrechen und Steuervergehen zu hinterlassen die heute noch überrascht. Obwohl das BZÖ und seine Berater einst anderer Meinung waren: Politik ist keine Römerquellenorgie. Statt Luxus und Selbstbereicherung sollten der Dienst an der Gesellschaft und das Streben nach Fortschritt im Vordergrund  politischen Handelns stehen. Demokratische Politik soll durchlässiger werden, aber kein VIP Spektakel.

Der Glamourminister mit Begleitung

Drittens schafft es der Superpraktikantenklamauk nicht, die wahren Gründe für das fehlende  Engagement Österreichischer Jugendlicher in den traditionellen Kanälen der Politik anzusprechen: Die begründete Angst vor einer modernisierungsfeindlichen Funktionärskultur, zermürbendem Postenschacher und allgemeiner Perspektivlosigkeit.  Dass sich politische und intelligente junge Menschen davor nicht fürchten müssen wird von der ÖVP nicht kommuniziert, die nimmt uns lieber mit ins 5-Sterne Dampfbad.

BZÖ Römerquellenorgie

Schließlich werden junge Menschen von der ÖVP hier schlichtweg für dumm verkauft. Anstatt den politischen Nachwuchs dort abzuholen wo er derzeit steht – nämlich in den Schulen und Hörsälen ebenso wie protestierend auf den Straßen oder, mangels besserer Alternativen, in der Privatwirtschaft – und mit ernsthaften Angeboten zu überzeugen, wirbt man mit all-inclusive Skiurlaub und der Möglichkeit, den Bauch eines uninspirierenden Parteichefs zu kraulen. Stattdessen sollte man junge Österreicher nach Lösungsvorschlägen zu unterfinanzierter Bildung, explodierender Staatsschuld, vernachlässigter Einwanderungspolitik und halsbrecherischen Pensionserhöhungen fragen. Dazu gehört auch der Mut, sich die Antworten anzuhören – und da ist mit der Basisdemokratie meist wieder Schluss.

Superpraktikanten jedenfalls haben auf solche Fragen keine Antworten, weswegen die ÖVP ihnen gerne den Urlaub bezahlt. Statt Superpraktikanten braucht Österreich eine moderne politische Personalpolitik. Anstelle aber ernsthaft über Möglichkeiten nachzudenken, wie der politische Prozess für neue Ideen und Personen geöffnet werden kann, verkauft man ihn lieber als Klingelton.

How to Rescue Austrian Football by 2078

Here is my 5-point plan to rescue Austrian football, based on some in-depth analysis of US girls’ soccer. Why bother? Because only future footballing success can prevent Austria’s descent into social unrest after glacial meltdowns end Austrian skiing dominance.

My Vision 2078 will restore Austrian football glory and, with it, the psychological integrity of my alpine homeland.

The moment Austrian identity almost flew away

The status quo is grim. At the time of writing, Austria ranks 58th in the FIFA world ranking, wedged between such ballestric luminaries as Burkina Faso (55) and Bahrain (61).

Burkina Faso - Football Nation

For some, like last-placed Papua New Guinea (203), inhabiting these echelons of mediocrity may seem like a respectable achievement. Maybe so, but Austria’s recent upwards surge, which has left Panama in charge of our natural habitat around 70th place, distracts from deeper issues.

One is psychological-historical. The dominant narrative of Austrian soccer, framed by the legendary cabaret-guru Helmut Qualtinger, is that a draw is a victory for Austria (“Ein Unentschieden ist ein Sieg für Österreich”). Qualtinger’s English-language classic is this:

Even Austria’s battle cry – “Immer Wieder”/”Here we go again” – is  fraught with insecurity (where are we are going again? Home?) and the delusional enthusiasm that breeds in a people deprived of their goals (literally) since  1978 – the year Austria ousted reigning world champion Germany in a 3:2 upset at the world cup in Cordoba. Watch this moment of glory, and a gem of Austrian sports broadcasting at 1:57, here:

That’s the context. Here’s the analysis.

I was cycling home from a rosy Hilltop sunset when the smell of wet grass and a ref’s whistle lured me to watch in nostalgically on some prep school girls’ soccer. By the way, don’t confuse The Hilltop (Georgetown) with The Hill (home of the world’s greatest legislative sausage factory)

Where laws are minced and pork barrells rolled

It was the perfect moment for some fence-post football: The first sunny evening in a while and nothing to do except write an overdue take-home exam, read a two-hundred page case-study on community-led garbage disposal initiatives in Denver and discuss the short-run effects of interest rate fluctuations.

Georgetown Visitation was giving Flint Hill a tough second half. Visitation has been Educating Women With Faith, Vision and Purpose Since 1799 and their girls sure played like it. (My All Star from the get-go was a beefy girl on the home-side defense. Her game ended ingloriously, unfortunately, when she almost impaled herself on a corner flag, breaking the flag and spraining an ankle.)

Georgetown Visitation Graduation

These girls knew how to play ball – and I know what I’m talking about.

I played goalkeeper on an all-Turkish-former-Yugoslav team (WAT 16) in Vienna as the only Austrian passport holder. I also played a stint with a youth rehabilitation squad in Italy.

At WAT 16 we had Gökhan, who specialized in the “Notbremse”; a vicious emergency break slide-tackle our coach would sometimes authorize in the final fifteen minutes. We also had Predrag, a colossal Serb, who could cover one half of a the goal all by himself just by standing there.

And we had myself: a lanky, bespectaled goof of uncertain descent (not being from Turkey or former Yugoslavia) who wouldn’t ever whip out his Schwanz to slap someone in the shower room. That I was never slapped had more to do with me showering at home than my team’s respect for my personal dignity.

My gear was awe-inspiring: a pink-and-purple jersey with a Cozy Toilet-Paper Tiger chest emblem. Here’s the tiger:

I could play, but as I watched Flint Hill battle it out, it occurred to me that I never played ball as well as these girls.

It’s not just because I got unlucky at birth. As a social scientist, I know a socially constructed phenomenon when I see one. Here is why we suck, and what we need to do about it:

1) We Need More Parental Support. Americans invented the Soccermom for a reason. They support their children in sports, no matter what. It goes too far sometimes, like when one obnoxious Mom heckled the away coach: “You call that a shot on goal? A shot on goal? Really? Maybe where you come from that’s a shot on goal! Kids, that’s how statistics LIE, they LIE!” Austrians: when our mothers turn up at games again, that’s when we’ll win again.

Soccer Mom

2) Their Coaches Tell Them To Head The Ball. My coach always scolded Predrag for heading the ball so hard. Heading is unhealthy (a proven fact by now, I think) and soccer coaches in Austria are actually forbidden to start headballing drills until players reached 16. Not so in the US! The girls I saw were going to Ivy League schools anyway, so why not make them head those far shots. Austria needs more headballs, we need to rule the sky.

3) They’re Tougher Over Here. No matter how much Schwanz slapping there was in the shower room, on the pitch Gökhan was a wuss. He would roll around like a puppy, wailing for his penalty. The explanation for this sort of behaviour, I’m sure, lies in Freud’s collected works or the Versailles Treaty.

But it remains a sad and incontrovertible fact that the thing Austrian players do best is fall. The bad news is this: Italians are better at it. Falling is not an Austrian niche, although Hermann Maier’s attempt was quite something:

4) $$$. The away team had 4 coaches and a full-time heckling mom. We had one chain-smoking coach, one goalkeeper coach who would come in once a week to watch us wriggle in the mud, and a father who would beat his son after the game for not scoring.

The US coaches I saw were great. They shouted things like “Exhale, Huskies!”  (to Flint Hill) or “Swiftboat, Now!” (to Visitation). They also looked like they used to play the game. My old coach would light up his second pack by overtime.

We’ve got to put the money in, and global warming should speed up the process (unless a pesky ice-age gets in the way).

5)  US Players Are Smarter. This point is well-illustrated by the most prominent graduate of my club, Austrian midfielder Didi Kühbauer:

The point is controversial for a number of reasons. First, I am calling a lot of people stupid. That is not a problem in itself, because when all is said and done a lot of people are stupid.

More importantly, though, it does matter that a majority of the girls I saw on the field today are heading to Ivy League schools in a few years, whereas Gökhan and Predrag would have been hard-pressed to add up the numbers on their backs.

The girls I saw played creatively, intelligently, and aggressively. They saw the openings, did the geometry, went for the hard balls but passed on the impossible ones.

Austrian footballers tend to gather around the left, lower tail of the normal IQ distribution.

What can we do about it? For starters, encourage intelligent kids to play football. Second, give football playing kids a better education. Third, overcome the vicious cycle of Austrian youth football: big, dumb players beat up and crowd out smarter, smaller players who need more time to develop physically.

That’s it. In 2078, there’s just no excuse not to beat Bahrain out of the world cup semi-final in Pyongyang.

Immer wieder, in 100-year intervals, is doable.

Austrian Independence Poll

10/26 is Austrian Independence Day. Out of respect for this momentous occasion, I will postpone the publication of my 5-point rescue program for the future of Austrian football.

To celebrate, I have done two things. First, I have added clarifying graffiti to my blog header.

Second, I invite you to take a good look at these two pictures and vote on who looks better. Be honest and judge on physical appearance only!

Ronald Reagan

Bruno Kreisky

I will discuss the results shortly. Vote away.

Happy Nationalfeiertag!

The Football vs. Soccer Issue

This is the first of two special posts on the future of Austrian football. You can learn a lot about a society from the way it plays football. You can also learn a lot from another society’s inability to do so properly. The learning begins here, with a case study on American girls’ soccer.

Today, I present the theory. The practice will follow shortly.

The question about the future of Austrian football is a vexing one. Most would argue that there is no future for Austrian football. These heretics come in three kinds. The first, pictured below, thinks it’s OK for Austrians to suck at soccer  -they encourage it, even – because it will make their own future failures less conspicuous.

The future of Austrian football

Type-2 heretics think that sucking at soccer forms part of a greater and specifically Austrian narrative: the narrative of decay.The most readable of these type-2 heretics would be Joseph Roth, especially his Radetzkymarsch, although he never got explicit about football.

The third kind of heretic – of which I am one – thinks that sucking at soccer is a social pathology, a problem that can be fixed. How to fix the Austrian Football Failure is the topic of my second post. Here, I engage in some preliminary football theory.

Before I get to the pathology itself, it is time to settle once and for all a festering theoretical non-issue in the realm of the most popular sport in the world: The Football vs. Soccer Issue.

I am a fervent non-partisan in this stale debate over the game’s proper title, an anti-partisan actually. I got a Fulbright scholarship partly for being gifted enough to avoid this sort of  discussion, and the amount of nonsense issued on this question at sports bars between Portland, Perth and Glasgow never fails to disturb me.

The debate has no substantive import. It is a mere testimony to the unfortunate confluence of an enormous excess of time with a corresponding absence of basic intercultural intelligence. My evidence consists of the following two clips that show two ideal-type perpetrators in action. Do watch at least 10 seconds of each clip, it will settle the case once and for all:

Perpetrator 1 – “The Issue Stated”

Perpetrator 2 – “The Response”

For the philosophical underpinnings of this moronic solipsism, refer back to the lecture by Princeton Philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s “On Bullshit”, in one of my earlier posts. Frankfurt’s distinction is the key here. We are not seeing a debate, much less an argument, in which two sides are defending the truth or constructing a lie.

We are witnessing a debate, in the videos posted above, in which both sides gleefully revel in the bullshit they spew forth.

This is a problem because it conceals the deeper issue, namely that lessons from either football or soccer are interculturally transferable and applicable.

That is my theoretical argument. Having successfully done away with the football/soccer dichotomy, I proceed on Friday to explain – based on a recent case study – why American girls are better at playing soccer than any Austrian, and what we can learn from that.

campaign management

Ron fights and wins elections for other people. His favorite campaign strategy is a combination of the “Pearl Harbor” and “Book End” tactics: a sneak attack with a loud terminal bang. Why? “Cause it’s fun.” If that won’t work, he will do the “Relentless Attack.” Why? “Cause it’s hard for somebody to punch you if you’ve got your fist in their face.”

Another one of Ron’s favorites: killing incumbents. The secret has two parts. “First”,  he whispers, “against an incumbent even this desk has 4%.” Second, he roars, “how do you eat an elephant?”

One bite at a time. Keep your cool, every race can be won.

Eating Elefants

Ronald Raucheux, PhD, invariably comes to class ten minutes late. The first thing he does is step outside to take client calls. Then he straightens his italian pinstripe and chalks the prices of his books on the board. Once the last dollar bill has transacted from our empty wallets into his suede leather briefcase, Ronald will connect his MacBook to the projector, turn to face us,  sigh, and take off his Elton John shades. Howareya?

Mr. Raucheux has fought and won over 100 elections  in the US, at all levels from municipal to presidential, including his own for the Louisiana state senate at 26. He has heaved labor unionists into Congress, nailed gubernatorial races for Neocon millionaires and produced TV spots for populist Latin American Putschists who want to be elected to offices they took with guns the first time round. It can all be done, “just stay on message, move fast – real fast – and stay on message.”

A registered independent, Ron hates Democrats and Republicans, works for both, and complains that political competition is getting more “screwed up” by the minute. When his hair turned grey he left the world of dirty politics for a world of even dirtier political consultancy and of teaching morons like myself how to win elections.

To understand Ron, and the real reason American politics is what it is, watch The War Room; the epic documentary about  how lunatic masterminds James Carville and George Stephanopoulos won Clinton’s 1992 election against the incumbent Pappa Bush. The key innovation in ’92 was Carville’s “War Room” (Hillary’s term): the chaotic, stale-pizza littered, red-telephone and multiscreen tapestried nerve hub of the world’s (then) biggest, fastest and most expensive campaign ever.

Ron (who goes golfing with Carville) is like Kant: a creator, follower and preacher of rules. Unlike Kant’s rules, Ron’s are few and simple:

Rule #1: Master the basics and do them very well.

Rule #2: There are no other rules.

The basics are to “define yourself, define the opposition, identify and mobilize voters, run a good campaign.” A good campaign is “a campaign that wins.” No shit, you think, but when Ron says it, it’s like having Hannibal giving a lecture on how to slaughter Romans. One bite at a time.

Stay on message.

Ron complains about campaign finance restrictions, laments that ‘the legislative process is called a sausage factory for a reason’, and will bet his mother that Sarah Palin is politically dead for good. The Palin projection, actually, was the only time I found myself hoping Ron would be right. If he’s right more than that, help us God.

Ron loves sharing battle stories. They feature villains (the opponent) and heroes (Ron’s candidate), masterminds (Ron) and the Holy Spirit (himself). Ron knows full well that “‘you don’t tell these stories if you don’t win the elections. Fortunately, I always win the elections.”

Once, Ron spent 95% of a multi-million dollar campaign budget producing glossy black and white pictures of a candidate’s covergirl daughter to supplement 100,000 personalized fund-raising letters. Another time he hoisted a Republican into office in a 70% democratic district with anti-communist ads that scared the shit out of the local chicken farmers. “It wasn’t negative campaigning, honestagod! It was just comparative. Real good comparative.”

Speaking of shit: Ron’s knowledge of it is what redeems his otherwise unbearably guruesque demenaour. I realized the extent of his wisdom at an event in the Austrian embassy, where I met the young media goof who recently ran some successful web campaigns for the Austrian Conservatives.

He lectured me on the end of campaigning as we know it. According to him, future elections will be won online, and the grey majority of wheelchair-cruising, third-teeth chattering senior Austrian citizens will navigate Web 2.0 like the Zentralfriedhof.

Waging the Wheelchair War

Not so, says Ron. “People have said billboards will be replaced by Newspaper will be replaced by Radio will be replaced by TV will be replaced by the Internet will be replaced by whoknowswhat. Bullshit. In political campaigning nothing will ever be replaced. There are no tradeoffs. You do it all, or you go home, awright?”

Awright.