(no subject)

[netmouse]

"I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"
- Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963

Comments

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

I think we just have different definitions of popular. If you define "what people watch" as what's popular, then you'd have to call investigating crime to be a very popular activity, based on tv time and attention. That doesn't mean that many people do it or would if they had the chance.

That's cool that soccer is so popular in China, too. It's certainly not unpopular in the US, especially not as compared to cricket. But maybe the people who grew up loving soccer like to play it and, like me, don't even watch TV most of the time.

I certainly appreciate it when soccer is playing at a bar I'm at. If any other sport is on, I will most likely ignore it (I'm a bit of a sucker for car racing, but that really takes applied attention and the voiceover to keep good track of, so it's not the best sport to watch in the bar. I also enjoy watching basketball).

Soccer is harder to capture on video than a lot of sports; I bet it's harder to cover live for television -the field is huge and the ball can move from one end to the other fairly quickly - unlike football, where possession of the ball is pretty easy for a spectator to track and most plays move forward down the field in a pretty predictable manner, or baseball, which is also predictable much of the time - you don't know if they guy will catch the ball or not, but you know which guy to aim the camera at. We don't have nicely built up soccer stadiums, and we already devoted money and real estate to baseball, hockey, basketball, and football. To lay the burden of responsibility for the success of soccer as a pro sport purely at the foot of its popularity is to be a little heavy-handed, in my opinion.