It's hard to be a sports fan these days. If your team tries to be decent members of society, they often end up being hot garbage on the field. Instead, we are glad when our team picks up the all-star free agent who is free because he threw his pregnant girlfriend down a flight of steps six months ago and we hope that at least for the rest of the season he can keep from being a complete dirtbag, at least in public. Rooting for decent people is nice...but winning is everything.
The World Cup began this week. It's being held in November and December instead of it's traditional summer place, because it's being held in Qatar, a place that most of us couldn't place on a map until three weeks ago. And it's held as the frost settles on our cars each morning because in Qatar if it was held in summer players would literally die on the field because of the heat.
Thing is, lots of people have died to build the stadiums in Qatar. And the survivors, mostly people from India and Bangledesh imported to provide the brute labor needed to build such things, have been repeatedly documented to be living in squalid living conditions and often cheated out of their negotiated wages. They're basically slaves, living as slaves in a nation that currently has the highest GDP in the world becuase of its oil revenues.
Of course, now the matches have started. We've watched England put a half-dozen past Iran, Saudi Arabia upset tournament faves Argentina, and our household team the USA underwhelm again. We don't really care about those other stories now, as long as we get our sports.
And maybe that's how it's supposed to be. We live in a world of trouble and misery and maybe these kinds of games keep us from thinking about things too much. I'll watch, but it's just not as much fun as it ought to be.
