Lacrosse: Sport of the North American Martyrs
Rugby is a gentleman’s sport played by savages; lacrosse is a savage’s sport played by gentlemen. Don’t ask me where I first heard that formula — it works best as a nugget of bona fide sports folk wisdom, an aphorism too perfect even for Yogi Berra to have coined. Brazenly racist, elitist and sexist — women play both sports — it captures the paradox in the history of each. Rugby, for all the beery swagger of its players, is a product of the social laboratory known as the British public school — namely, the Rugby School, home to Thomas Arnold, Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown and Flashman. Its very name screams of inherited privilege, empires and cold baths — three things, I am convinced, the world is mainly better off for seeing less of.
These days lacrosse may be the near-exclusive property of prep schools and suburbs, but it was born in the North American woodlands and baptized in the blood of the martyrs.
Three Babies, Four Dogs, Two Breasts, and No Radiohead: A Dispatch From Occupy ...
Manhattan —The class war began at the corner of Broadway and Cedar St., as Wall Street’s bankers waited for a bus and Wall Street’s occupiers, for a revolution. What had begun two weeks ago as an unfocused rabble of ragtag discontents had become a still-unfocused rabble of ragtag discontents—but way bigger. The culprit: Radiohead. Rumors of a surprise solidarity concert had brought the huddled masses streaming in from Williamsburg, Greenpoint, and Bushwick. The crowd in Zuccotti Park, occupation-central, bulged outwards, spilling into the bus stop, tivas scuffing shined loafers and graphic tees dueling paisley ties.
“Hey, you’re communists!” taunted Barry, sporting the latter. “You should move to a communist country.” A quick rejoinder: “Well you’re an asshole!” Barry fired back—“You call me an asshole, asshole? Get out of this park, jerkoff!”—and the defender sank back into the square. “These guys have beef with our country, they’re Marxists,” Barry told me triumphantly, before another interruption. “No,” butted in a bearded occupier. “There are no Marxists here.” “Yeah, whatever, get out of here!” Barry scorned. The occupier laughed and blew him a kiss, “Love you sir!” “Yeah?” responded the beleaguered Barry. “Well I hate you.” “Love you!” “Hate you!
A group of retirees milling around in “Inside Job” t-shirts laughed smugly. “All these banker clowns were selling puts on American Airlines before the attacks,” said one in a sweat suit. “Yeah, they didn't even protect the Pentagon,” said another.
