A conservative pursuit
GIGOT, PAUL A.
A Conservative Pursuit paul a. gigot Either I am a lousy political columnist, or the country is in much better shape than I thought. Or both. I say this judging from the response I've received...
...Note to Gen-X readers: Buckley confused Lombardi with band leader Guy Lombardo, who did a New Year's gig before Sinbad...
...Paul A. Gigot writes a column on Fridays in the Wall StreetJournal...
...Elections, on the other hand, rarely settle much of anything, especially in this age of the permanent campaign...
...Coaches win or they are fired...
...One of the sillier cliches of sportswriters and other moralists is that Americans admire sports stars too much but (let us say) teachers too little...
...Regarding race, I'm always struck when sportswrit-ers who know nothing about Green Bay fly in to do the black-players-in-a-white-town piece...
...Many conservatives were detached from such hoi-polloi concerns...
...Miler Jim Ryun, Hall of Fame receiver Steve Largent, quarterbacks J.C...
...Liberals may dominate Hollywood, but conservatives hold their own on America's playing fields...
...But as a conservative, I'm encouraged...
...Despite the city's small size (fewer than 100,000), the Packers are a rare NFL team with a national following...
...One reason sports is so popular is precisely its adherence to measurable standards, to absolutes...
...There isn't much the uptown elites of Northwest Washington, D.C., have in common with the poor of the city's Southeast quadrant save bad snow removal—and the Redskins...
...In the 1970s, serious people worried that pro basketball was doomed because white Americans wouldn't attend a sport dominated by black players...
...I doubt this helped his image as a man of the people...
...We put up with enough arbitrary judgments in the rest of our lives...
...The teams were lined up on the field but the refs held the ball while music blared until the ads finished on the tube...
...Buckley replied, "New Year's Eve will never be the same...
...Black ballplayers have become some of America's most popular cultural icons, and its most effective salesmen...
...Fans tolerate runaway salaries, because they understand that in sports, at least on the field, people are held accountable...
...It's harder to be a racist if you spent your childhood cheering for, and marveling at, Michael Jordan...
...One of the most appealing things about the Packers is the sense of reciprocal obligation that exists between town and team...
...During one early timeout, with the Packers defense on the field, the jumbo TV screens inside Lambeau began to play a music video of defensive lineman Reggie White singing "Amazing Grace...
...He lives his creed, and so he has credibility among fellow players and fans...
...About 20 seconds or so into this White video, the crowd starts to sing along...
...More surprising still, most of the letters come not merely from the state of Wisconsin but from football fans around the country...
...One sports virtue is its ability to appeal across lines of ideology, class, race, and age...
...Only in recent years has the team built cozy skyboxes shielded from the elements...
...I say this judging from the response I've received to a Wall Street Journal column I wrote in late December on the Green Bay Packers...
...Sports has done as much as any American institution, including the military, to break down racial stereotypes...
...Any country with more passion for sports than politics might not be slouching toward Gomorrah after all...
...Even basketball's Charles Barkley says that if he ever runs for governor in his home state of Alabama, he'll do it as a Republican...
...Except for the Chicago Bears...
...If they win Sunday, I'll gladly do the buying...
...During the five years I lived in Hong Kong, my best entree into Chinese culture was basketball...
...I'm all for admiring teachers, at least those who don't run the NEA...
...He also allowed as how he felt ashamed to have people see him walking through the parking lot in his loafers when everyone else was wearing boots...
...Watts and Jack Kemp, and fastball pitcher Jim Bun-ning all made their names as athletes before they ran for Congress...
...And there is no greater meritocracy than sports...
...We pick a team because it's our local team, or because it was Dad's, or because its players or nature appeals to something personal in us...
...He's now head coach in Philadelphia...
...Someone finishes first, someone last...
...And on my trip to Green Bay for the championship game, I ran into a fan who said he had a seat in one of the boxes...
...Now, White is an ordained minister who says he came to Green Bay as a free agent because God told him to...
...Working for the sainted Bill Buckley in the late 1970s, I once got a scribbled note asking, "Who is Henry Aaron...
...Obey...
...One of them, Ray Rhodes, left Green Bay amid rumors of unhappiness, but the experience didn't do him any harm...
...I'm convinced that one reason so many football fans favor the return of instant replay is that it eliminates even the rare possibility of ambiguity...
...As a political columnist, I suppose I should find this greater interest in sports demoralizing...
...He evangelizes at every press conference, and he leads players from both teams in prayer after every game...
...Unlike politics, where as George Shultz once famously put it, nothing ever gets settled, sports provides finality...
...The jumbo screens show, "We Believe...
...Bill's brother Jim, the former senator from New York, was asked during the 1970s what he thought about the death of Vince Lombardi, who before being a legendary football coach had been a legendary athlete at Fordham in the Bronx...
...From time to time the city has bailed the team out, and the team in turn adds luster to the city...
...You can call this corny if you want, but as a display of shared civic purpose, it sure beats anything I'm likely to see at Bill Clinton's second inaugural...
...But unlike in religion or politics, we don't hate each other when the game's over...
...But what's wrong with a kid looking up to Grant Hill and Rebecca Lobo, whose talent and discipline allow them to do things few others can...
...Half of my teammates couldn't speak English, and my Chinese was rudimentary, but a decent jump shot opened doors...
...Especially among men, sports remains America's great common cultural currency...
...When the game-time temperature of three degrees was announced last Sunday, the crowd roared...
...To appreciate heroes is to admire excellence, which is a way of maintaining a society rooted in merit...
...We don't want the rightful fruits of triumph to be stolen by some knucklehead's "judgment call...
...But Obey is from western Wisconsin, and on the day of Newt Gingrich's reelection as speaker, I was suddenly handed a note up in my seat in the press gallery above the House floor: "If the Packers win, then you should buy me a drink or I should buy you one to celebrate...
...The most remarkable moment, though, came during one of the those "TV timeouts" in the first half...
...Members of my family who sprint like Michael Johnson away from a political topic bothered to read and comment on the Packer piece...
...A year ago he claimed a hamstring injury had been healed by a miracle...
...A team wins or loses...
...Maybe I'll even invite Speaker Gingrich to join us...
...Every good Packers fan hates the Bears...
...But in recent years, former sports stars have usually run for office as Republicans...
...Double for the Super Bowl...
...The other great cultural virtue of sports is that it allows us to form tribal attachments, but without the Balkanizing side effects...
...Players perform or they get cut...
...While sports has been infected with some of the same corruptions as the rest of American society, its popularity is a sign of cultural health...
...When Packers star Reggie White's Tennessee church burned down, Wisconsin residents sent him more than $200,000 without even being asked...
...The Packers have had numerous black superstars, even going back to the glory days in the 1960s...
...The next thing I know, Obey has dragged Jay Johnson, the new Democratic congressman from Green Bay, down to the well of the House to give me the thumbs-up and chant, "Go, Packers...
...Politics, by contrast, has become ever more fragmented...
...In this sense, a game in Lambeau Field, especially a big championship game, amounts to a kind of civic rite...
...Partly this flows from its Lombardi glory years, but I suspect Americans also like the idea of a city whose residents own the franchise...
...That was shortly before the NBA soared in popularity...
...Hall of Fame safety Willie Wood was a personal hero...
...Meanwhile, down on the field, moments from clubbing some 300-pound tackle, White is pointing his arms up at the heavens...
...Soon 60,000 fans are booming out, ". . . saved a wretch like me...
...Once former jocks always seemed to be Democrats—Bill Bradley, for one...
...A good populist like Obey would understand that one sign that the conservative movement was becoming more popular was when it began to attract more athletes to its ranks...
...Readers are showing they have sensible priorities, especially in this age of understandably diminished faith in politicians...
...The Packers were the first football team to have blacks as both offensive and defensive coordinators...
...The letters, e-mail messages, and phone calls are still coming in, outdrawing by at least 10-to-1 the response I get on even a well-received political column, which is supposed to be my bread and butter...
...As a conservative, I also don't have too much cause to talk to Democrat David Obey, one of Congress's most aggressive class warriors...
...The colder the weather, the better the sense of shared ordeal...
Vol. 2 • January 1997 • No. 19
