While visiting my folks this evening, I saw the start of a NASCAR race, including the pre-race invocation (i.e., Christian prayer). Generally speaking, I find this pretty strange; this is my own opinion, but I don't see that God has anything to do with sports, which is inherently motivated by selfishness. Not to insult athletes (which I guess doesn't really apply to NASCAR drivers)--I admire and enjoy athletic achievement in many ways. But any athlete worth their salt would admit that it's basically selfish in nature. Especially when you throw in marketing, advertising, sponsorships, and all the other profit-making add-ons of professional sports.

But what struck me as odd was that the invocation invoked the victims of Hurricane Katrina, and ended by saying that the drivers were inspired by them and implied that the race was in some part a tribute to them. I couldn't help but immediately think of the energy crisis that the hurricane-affected area of the country is facing--many areas without power, most without access to gasoline. Granted, the gas used in NASCAR is not the type used for general consumer consumption, so they're not taking gas directly from any hurricane victim, but the principle of the thing left a bad taste in my mouth.

If you want to race cars around in circles, burning through thousands of gallons of gas and other materials (tires, metal parts, etc.), that's fine, go do that. But don't try to turn it into some noble venture, a tribute to those who are suffering for the lack of the very things you're wasting on pure spectacle.

Another note on this strange event. There was also a segment paying tribute to our military serving in Iraq. This is something else that makes me uncomfortable. Professional sports in this country is about the least necessary, most wasteful activity there is. Its sole purpose is entertainment, yet it consumes monstrous amounts of resources and people's time. Again, I don't want to overly dismiss it--I enjoy my NFL and pro soccer and tennis--but I think it's wrong to link such frivolity to something as serious as war. Particularly when that war is almost certainly focused so much on oil.

A NASCAR race, or any other sporting event, is no tribute to the suffering caused by poverty, natural disasters, or war. Rather it's a reminder that while some have to struggle for their very lives, the rest of us can afford to waste time, money and resources on pointless, mindless entertainment. We can sit in the stands or in our living rooms and swell up with some kind of detached-from-reality pride when the solemn announcer invokes something that actually means something, then diminishes that very meaning to transfer a false importance to the meaningless sport. Most people don't deal well with contradictions, even less so with accepting it in their own behavior, and so don't realize how absurd this juxtaposition is. Let us not run from that dichotomy, but rather learn from it and use it to help us grow out of such childish complacency.

Labels: Culture