Speaking

Exercise 9. Browse through American and British newspapers (or their Sunday supplements) for ads. Make up a list of most typical ads for each edition and ask your classmates to guess which of the newspapers would be running them.

Exercise 10.Use your outside reading, personal experiences, TV and video-watching, etc. to support, expand on or question the points and observations made in the chapter. Use compelling evidence and appropriate language to sound convincing.

Writing

Exercise 11.Write a 300-word commentary explaining the cultural things involved.

Unit 23. Good sport

AMERI-SPORT: It’s not ‘how you play the game’, no siree, sir. It’s whether you win or lose. Even more important, it’s how youpay the game. Professional sportsmen and women have careers which are nasty, brutish and short, so they’ve a right to pocket what they can while they’re young and hot.

Sport in America is three things:

1. another branch of show-biz

2. a ritualised exercise in patriotism and regional loyalty – (i.e., a way of saying ‘my country is better than your country’, and ‘Cleveland is better than Cincinnati’)

3. a branch of the Bank of America – (i.e., a commercial bonanza for athletes, sponsors and promoters).

Fair play

BRIT-THINK: Brits are respected the world over for the quality of their sportsmanship, and sense of fair play. They are also known for their fondness for amateurism, reluctance to invest in sport, and lack of organized, up-to-date training facilities. This means that Brit-athletes are somewhat hampered, and tend to compete with one set of pectorals tied behind their backs. Internationally, at least, they seldom win anything ... which they put down to a superior sense of fair play. (Fair play does not extend to Brit fans’ treatment of the other team’s supporters, which is more like foul play).

Brits have great patience in sport. That’s why they invented cricket, which is an exercise of such subtlety, that only life-long devotees can tell when the ball is actually in play. The moment of maximum spectator appeal comes when players break for tea. Otherwise, games can continue for two or three days with no clear result. Ditto snooker, which lacks the excitement of jai alai, downhill racing or roller-derby, but keeps Britaudiences glued to tellies in huge numbers for days at a time.

Both Britain and America have ‘national’ sports (cricket and baseball) which are played in the summer, and get smaller gates than various versions of football (played in the winter) which attract bumper crowds.

American football is:

1. a contact sport for those who also enjoy watching head-on collisions between Refrigerators,

2. at college level, a means of awarding athletic scholarships to fellows who count best if it’s in yard-lines, and

3. at professional level, an excuse for patriotic displays at halftime, post-game parties, and mega-salaries for anyone who looks like Joe Namath.

Brit-footie is:

1. a means of social mobility, whereby working-class lads with no other options save jobs down the pits or in rock-bands – can earn a decent living while preserving lungs and eardrums, and

2. a way of letting off steam in public, allowing Brit-fans to pummel each other to a pulp in the stands while players hug and kiss on the pitch.