Everybody Loves a Loser

It’s widely said that the world loves a winner, but what really gets our juices flowing is failure. We can’t get enough of it. The Olympics coverage was mainly hundreds of hours of extreme close-ups of tearful near winners, or replay after replay, in glorious high-def slow-motion, of skiers wiping out and skaters slamming into the boards.

This is what the whole genre of so-called reality TV is all about. Who survives on Survivor or becomes the next American Idol is anti-climactic. We want to see the ones who get voted off the island, or who get trashed by whoever’s playing the caustic Simon role these days.

But it goes beyond sports and entertainment. Why has MSNBC morphed into the “All Christie, All The Time” channel? They’re circling like vultures, believing the New Jersey Governor’s political demise to be imminent.

Mel Brooks is quoted as saying “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.” Sure. What could be more entertaining that watching someone else’s utter defeat?

And this is what unites us most as humans … our mutual complete disregard for each other’s well being. It’s a beautiful thing.

The Game's A Foot

I'm not what you'd call a big sports fan.  I had never watched a baseball game on TV until I was 30, after I had moved from New York to New England. Consequently, I was never a fan of any of the New York teams, though some of my high school friends consider this treasonous. What little rooting I have done has all been for the more northerly teams.

Nonetheless, I'm able to see a clear distinction between New York sports fans and fans in New England.  Specifically, New York sports fans tend to cheer their teams because those teams win a lot.

In New England, fans seems to endure their teams, the way they endure the climate and the terrain. Red Sox fans grew more passionate with each passing year of championship drought.  They finally found a manager who led the team to its first World Series victory in 86 years, and then followed up with another victory 3 years later! And what became of that manager? They fired him.

Now the New England Patriots seem bent on grabbing some of the Red Sox cachet by also snatching defeat from the jaws of victory ... repeatedly.

Perhaps it's because the whole region is so infused with a sense of its own history, but New England sports fans seem to prefer reminiscing about past glories to actually enjoying new ones.