In August Productions

Please, everybody, stop calling the the NFL, NBA and MLB champions the "World Champs." They aren't. They are, respectively, the champions of the NFL, the NBA and Major League Baseball. It's possible that each of them are the best team in the world in that sport that year, and in the NFL's case you could argue that since not a single other country in the world plays the game that they are de facto the World Champions (although it's still a little arrogant to call someone World Champs when the scope of the competition is just a single country) BUT, in the case of the NBA and MLB, it's just straight-up, 100% false.

But our baseball and basketball leagues are the best in the world! Who would argue that the best players don't all come here to play?

See - that's not quite the point, because the word "Champion" does not mean "arbitrarily chosen to be considered the best" (BCS boondogle not withstanding). A champion is defined as:

a person who has defeated all opponents in a competition or series of competitions, so as to hold first place

This is the problem - in order to have a champion of something, you sort of have to have a tournament for that thing. That being clear, I'd like to point out:

The NBA playoffs are not a championship all of the teams in the world are eligible to gain access to.

The World Series is nothing of the sort.

The Super Bowl features two teams from the US.

Although magnificent achievements, in none of those cases should the victor be assumed to have defeated all opponents in the world. So please stop it with the pro-US arrogance and call them what they are... the NFL champions, the NBA champions and the MLB champions.

And while you're at it, call the winner of the BCS title game what it is - the winner of the BCS title game. Let's stop granting sports victory titles by fiat. 

Most of the time I think of myself as living in a fairly progressive and enlightened world. I'm fotunate that I work with a set of wonderful people, I can travel all over the world and I'm a member of an excellent theatre company. As a result, hatred of things, or at least expressions of hatred are generally just not tolerated in any of the circles in which I run. (With the exception, of course, of things that FAIL, like a particularly bad piece of code - but even then it's less about hatred and more about not liking something that didn't work)

There are two social acceptable exceptions to that rule, though: Americans, and cats.

I was reading a blog post earlier this morning (which I won't link to because that's not the point here) which was a fun post about older people finding new music. As a person who is not getting any younger myself, the blog post was quite enjoyable. Smack in the middle of it though, there was a fairly senseless off-hand dig at stupid Americans. It was so off-hand though, that I think that's why it jumped out at me - hate, scorn or derision of folks from the US is so normal as to not even elicit emotion. 

In most of the circles I travel in, if you said the same sentence but replaced Americans with just about any other arbitrary grouping of people (and were not being ironic) you would meet with quite a good amount of resistance. Just imagine me making a comment about "stupid Asians" and see how long I get to remain at the dinner party. 

I notice a similar thing with cats. In any group of people, there will be someone in the group who, if cats come up, will freely talk about how they hate cats, or how they used to torture cats. I have heard people talk about throwing cats across rooms with the same level of concern as they would tell me what sandwich they had for lunch. I suppose, given that a cat is just an animal, that one could just assume people don't care as much about animals... but substitute dog for cat in any of those stories and you will find yourself with a riot on your hands. And the times I've tried to point out the dichotomy to dog-loving friends who avow hatred of cats, the response usually comes back "I guess... but I hate cats"

Why is it socially ok to tell stories about torturing cats when torturing dogs is societally completely unforgivable. Why is it ok to single out a group of people based on geographical origin for scorn, when  it is not ok to do so in general?

The really sad part is that when I ask those questions... I get justifications. "Cats suck" or "The US brings it on itself." But I've got to say - abusing animals is not ok, no matter what the animal is, and bigotry is wrong no matter who the target is. Regardless of how cool you may think such expressions make you, I believe they do nothing but show ignorance... and they make me sad.