Normally on this date annually
Boston Irish prints its annual Buzzkill piece on how the only real Americans were the victims of Genocide over the last few hundred years, and you should all feel guilty (yes, including me) for watching the Lions shock the Packers 36-30 (you heard it here first!) when no one is acknowledging the plain and simple fact that a massive genocide was perpetrated over the course of four hundred years.
Fun times for all!
Previous Buzzkill Thanksgiving entries;2008
2007Naturally, people really don’t much care for that, and the torrents of abuse are always plentiful, varied and vitriolic.
This year,
Boston Irish doesn't have the energy for the inevitable abuse, so will be just saying
'Happy Thanksgiving', eating some delicious home made pumpkin pie and enjoying the football in the best possible company.
You know what is amazing though? The sheer level of hatred and anger out there in the vast cluster-fudge that is the Internet. It’s not just the Turkey day piece. No way, José. Sports, believe it or not, is an incredibly divisive subject. Shocker, I know. I would chance a guess that of all the e-mail Boston Irish has drawn since its inception in 2006, the vast majority has been argumentative, hateful anti-fan mail. Not sure what that says about the content of this blog, maybe it's a comment on that, or maybe it is a comment on the spiteful nature of the Net of Inter.
Hey, let’s have a look at the highlights, why not, in the spirit of Genocide day. Right after some Turkey Day NFL quick picks.
Green Bay @ Detroit +6It is very hard to go 16-0 in the NFL season. It is even harder to go 19-0. Just ask any Patriots fan. Ask them when they wake up on a beach in Mexico after getting thrown out of a theater for shouting at Dallas fans who were rooting for the Giants (What?! Really?! But they are both in the NFC East?! Right, I know!). Either which way, Detroit to shock the world.
The score: Green Bay 30 Detroit 36
The Pick:
Detroit +6Miami @ Dallas -7Would the real Dallas please stand up?! Miami playing with momentum that seemed highly unlikely a month ago. Go with the hot hand (and the points). Dallas hasn't beaten anyone decent since they got hammered by the Eagles. Their three game winning streak is a paper tiger.
The score: Miami 24 Dallas 23
The Pick:
Miami +7San Francisco @ Baltimore -3.5Is there still room on the 49ers bandwagon?
The score: San Francisco 24 Baltimore 20
The Pick:
San Francisco +3.5Death threatsNaturally top of the bill was a death threat, that came in late 2007. It had to be the most poorly thought out death threat of all time. It was anonymous, poorly spelt and quite unspecific in nature. It took me a while to figure out why the e-mailer was so angry. Goodness me though, it was expletive laden and very hateful. The funny thing was, it was so poorly spelt it never really got under my skin. It was almost as if an angry Orangutan had taken the time and spent the effort to become proficient in typing but slacked off on the whole spelling side of things. Still, you haven’t lived unless you have had at least one death threat in your life, so, we can check that box off at least.
Jets fansOh those poor little Jets fans. They get so wound up, angry and frustrated. In many, many ways, Rex Ryan is the perfect coach for the J-E-T-S, as he mirrors much of their fan base. Fat, unruly, seemingly pretty uneducated (I feel like I can write that, having received poorly written death threats from their fan-base), Ryan has been blazing a trail of trash-talking glory throughout his tenure with the Jets, all with very little impact on the standings in the AFC East. The Jets had their day in the sun when they won 'their Superbowl' (as they called it) and are now reduced to side notes with a generally humorous slant. Rex Ryan crying in the locker room. Rex Ryan eating twelve cheeseburgers at one sitting. Rex Ryan's foot fetish. Rex Ryan’s pants ripping during a team meeting. The Jets, their coach and their fans are a side-note in ’11, and goodness me, their fan base is angry. Boston Irish has received a slew of poorly written, hard to decipher ‘hate mail’ from Jets fans over the years, none more so than in ’11. The following three emails are from angry little Jets fans, all received in the last three years, all from different IP addresses.
Now that's a beer bellyI like to picture someone from Holland saying the above, in a really bad Euro-English accent. Try it, it’s fun.
Subject: ‘The Patriots suck and so do you’Highlights: ‘Mark MY words the Patriots WILL get beaten by the Jets in round two and the Patriots WILL finish behind the Jets. Tom Brady can watch while Mark Sanchez leads the Jets to the Superbowl just like Brady did the Patriots in 01’Jets fans seem to really like the word ‘suck’. Is there some deep underlying meaning behind this? Sadly this fan WAS wrong ABOUT the GAME last SUNDAY (Capitals rule!).
Subject: ‘Why do you bother?’Highlights: ‘In five years time Mark Sanchez will be on the cover of every magazine and Tom Brady will be a nobody’Odd one this, unsure as to why this Jets fan took the time to send me this email, was this scary premonition meant to upset me in some shape or form? You know, the Internet is such a crazy place really, it’s funny to think someone took the time to sit down and write a long, boring (believe me, the above was the only interesting part) email to someone they don’t know based on an amateur article on sports.
Then again, that’s the entire reason we keep this blog, communication, therefore you have to reason you take the bad with the good. Plus, those Jets fans are kind of funny in an angry-ant kind of way. Quite angry, but essentially harmless.
NASCAR fansFor people that spend an inordinate amount of time watching cars go round and round in circles, NASCAR fans can sure generate volumes of angry emails. Tip to all aspiring writers, don’t ever take on NASCAR, the retribution will be massive, aggressive and very, very poorly spelt.
Yankees fansYou would think, with the heavily Boston slanted content of this blog, the majority of abuse would emanate from the keyboard of Yankee fans. Far from it. There has been much more e-mail from those angry little Jets fans over the years. Instead, there have been basically two Yankee fans who launched long propaganda campaigns over the course of weeks, starting out aggressive, angry and bitter, eventually becoming dull and boring. Snap judgment, from a small cross-section, Yankees fans appear much better at basic manipulation of the English language than, for example, Jets fans. Is this a thinly veiled comment on New Jersey and it’s populace?
Of course, no Yankee fan will ever be as angry as
this guy.
English peopleSaving the best for last. You really never know you have been verbally abused by an English person until about seven hours after it actually happens. You know that Simpsons where Homer meets Ricky Gervais, and he listens to him waffle on for ages before finally exclaiming,
‘You take FOREVER to say NOTHING!’ People who read this, I give you
English people! Taking a step back, where do all these angry English e-mails come from? Simple. My father, brother and I have always taken great pleasure in the demise of any English sports team. Soccer, cricket, Rugby or whatever, it doesn’t matter. It is funny when England loses. It’s funny when the English cricket team loses to a minor cricket nation and the English press screams headlines akin to ‘England’s failures may be because they are hopeless’. It is funny when England get knocked out of the World Cup.
Why is it so funny? That’s simple. If you lived in Ireland in the 80s you were suffocated by British sports on TV. The Charlton and golden Irish rugby eras had yet to begin, and Sky Sports was just a pipe dream. Instead we had to suffer arrogant British sports commentators on the BBC or UTV. You know the drill, a British athlete in a 20 person field in a track event? Even if the British athlete finished fifth, theirs is the name you would hear most. Soccer? Don’t even get me started. British sports pundits, who we had rammed down our throats for decades before the sports media explosion, were always convinced they would win whatever tournament they were playing in.
So it is easy to see why any British sporting demise is greeted with glee in my family household.
Thing is, they don’t take it very well, the Brits. Cue reams, stacks, truck-loads of angry emails whenever Boston Irish says anything bad about the UK.
Well, chin up, limey. Just wait until the European Championships next year! We can have a good go at each other then.
In the meantime, Happy Thanksgiving, peace and love to all.
''In the 1910, the total population of North American Indians was about 400,000, down from about 18 -19 million in 1492.''
(David Stannard in his 'American Holocaust', 1992, pp. 74-75, p.151)
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