Comments on: For All Suitably Restricted Definitions of ‘World’

By: Aidan Kehoe

Aidan Kehoe — Tue, 03 Feb 2004 14:32:23 +0000

Walt Pohl; the ASA, in the UK, is the Advertising Standards Authority. As you’ve already found out from Google, no doubt. In that benighted land, lies in advertising material are viewed as a bad thing.

By: Another Damned Medievalist

Another Damned Medievalist — Mon, 02 Feb 2004 16:58:53 +0000

The World Cup (not the Rugby, Cricket, or any other …) followed by the FA cup. The Olympics are a sham and have been since they allowed in the pros. But I think we really can call the Superbowl “super.”

By: JP

JP — Mon, 02 Feb 2004 14:46:18 +0000

I think we can all agree that Adam Vinatieri is the greatest athlete in the history of sport. Well, he’ll never have to pay for a meal in Boston again for the rest of his life. Unless they go back to the Super Bowl for a third time and he chokes.

By: Walt Pohl

Walt Pohl — Mon, 02 Feb 2004 04:32:19 +0000

Perhaps the Super Bowl is not the world’s most important sport, but I think we can all agree that Adam Vinatieri is the greatest athlete in the history of sport.

By: Greg

Greg — Mon, 02 Feb 2004 02:17:31 +0000

Making Calvin the world champion at Calvinball, I presume?

By: JakeV

JakeV — Mon, 02 Feb 2004 00:41:07 +0000

Oneangryslav, if no one else in the world plays the game, it seems reasonable to call its champion the “world champion,” no? I agree with cure’s point—if your league is clearly the best in the world, why not call its winner the “world champion”? This may be somewhat sensational language, but I can’t see how it’s an example of “parochialism.”

By: Keith M Ellis

Keith M Ellis — Mon, 02 Feb 2004 00:25:53 +0000

Yeah. For that matter, I read recently a whole debunking of the Abner Doubleday story (of inventing baseball and that town). I have to agree with someone above who finds the “World Series” thing oddly quaint and charming. That name is the product of a more innocent time of parochialism, when it was sort of inevitable; there’s not much excuse for the attitudes about the superbowl. Incidentally, the 3 billion people for the World Cup is almost certainly false. They claim a billion people or something ridiculous for the Superbowl, which is transparently false; but you end up with the same sorts of problems with the World Cup and three billion. That’s too many people. There’s maybe, what?, five billion people alive now. There’s still way too many people in China, India, and Indonesia with no access to televisions for that number to be correct. I’d perhaps believe a billion, though, which is pretty amazing, really. I was just told that my best friend and roommate’s brother catered the Playboy Superbowl Party last night. He talked to Paris Hilton. My friend is gay, so he wasn’t as excited by his brother’s news as he might have otherwise been. His brother seemed circumspect on how, er, excited he was about it, too. But he has a young wife and child.

By: Andrew Boucher

Andrew Boucher — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 22:17:36 +0000

Apparently the story about the World Series being named after a newspaper is apocryphal. See http://roadsidephotos.com/baseball/name.htm

By: Dan S

Dan S — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 20:50:41 +0000

This doesn’t undermine the general charges of parochialism in the US, but fwiw, the World Series was named after a newspaper that provided the trophy or something like that. I don’t remember exactly, but the name was definitely not a claim to be some international competition. Am I the only one who enjoys seeing “world famous chicken wings” on the menu?

By: oneangryslav

oneangryslav — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 20:30:52 +0000

I remember flying into Logan airport (in Boston, for those who have never been there) shortly after the Patriots had won the Super Bowl two years ago, and I, and all other passengers, were greeted with a giant banner proclaiming the Pats, “World Champions”. The fact that there is only one other counry in the world with a professional league (Canada—NFL Europe is not a domestic league) didn’t seem to bother those making the claim. By the way, the final of the World Cup in 2002 was watched by almost 3 billion people (almost every second person alive at the time).

By: Keith M Ellis

Keith M Ellis — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 19:26:53 +0000

Is the damn thing over yet? I so don’t care. I admit that I was a Dallas Cowboys fan when I was younger because it was a family thing and they were good then; but that all ended when whathisname fired Tom Landry on the golf course. If I ever came close to having a sports hero, Landry would have been it. I had the misfortune of being intellectual type geeky boy in a larger family (my dad and siblings) of rabid sports fans. And it’s not like my dad is some Joe Sixpack, he’s supposed to be like a genius or something. I mentioned the Indy 500, though, because I like Indycar and, to a lesser extent, F1 racing. My dad raced a little bit and our family knows the Unsers, and I love to drive and sort of wish I had figured out a way to race cars. I don’t really like NASCAR but that’s probably the snob in me. There’s no reason I shouldn’t if I like oval-track racing. I wish we had more rally racing in the US like you folks have in Europe. I’m rambling. I need to go to bed. I haven’t slept yet. Is the Superbowl over yet? I’d watch the women during halftime if they were nude. Lingerie doesn’t do much for me.

By: Brian Weatherson

Brian Weatherson — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 19:13:33 +0000

Sebastian’s principle: If X doesn’t “trip cleanly off the tongue” it’s OK to paraphrase it with Y as long as, er well I’m not sure as long as what because in this case X and Y are not very closely related at all. Maybe “seem to mean roughly the same thing after the first 10 beers”. If the Pats win tonight maybe we’ll get a chance to see whether that is really true. More seriously, note that the commentators would not have used this expression if they thought the World Series or NBA finals or the Masters or US Open (either tennis or golf) were bigger than the SuperBowl, so ‘single-day’ can hardly be part of the implicit meaning here. There is an implied comparison to these finals, and so one would think given the ordinary meaning of the word there was also a comparison to the Tour and other events. Whether there’s an implied restriction to annual events is harder to tell out of context – the US doesn’t feature many non-annual sporting events. Perhaps that is tacit though, because even parochial sports commentators would (I think) concede the Olympics are bigger than the Superbowl.

By: Sebastian Holsclaw

Sebastian Holsclaw — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 18:06:48 +0000

I don’t think “Mostly widely watched single-day annual sports event” trips as cleanly off tongue. Sheesh the generalizations that get whipped around here over a sports commentator.

By: Phersu

Phersu — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 17:27:58 +0000

Oh, yes, the International Criminal Court is sooo eurocentric. And that buzzword, “democracy”. It is so Greek it will never work.

By: rsn

rsn — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 16:58:31 +0000

Hyperbole in measuring the significance of local institutions on the world stage is not confined to Americans. What about the “International” Criminal Court? It is completely based on European law, not the American Constitution. Come to think of it, it’s not based on Sharia law, either. Nor Chinese law. Hmmmm? Parochialism, anyone?