Yet another blog post...

• Current Events
• Racial Ethnic Slurs
• American knowledge vs Canadian Knowledge
• Sabbath

Current Events...

If you've been reading this blog for a while (or if you take a look at the archives) you will note that I rarely (well..probably more often than rarely...more likely occasionally) will blog about things in my life rather focusing on more philosophical thoughts.

So what's been going on with me lately?

This has certainly been quite a summer, which has seen many interesting things happen. Some of the most interesting were two weddings and two engagements, one set to marry next year, the other set the following year. But the biggest thing for me is still to come: I'm going to be moving out at the end of the month! I've found an apartment (read flat in some areas) downtown that is much closer to my place of education (Queen's University) and will be living there for the next year at the very least. Soon I will have to start packing. This past weekend I was in Canada's Wonderland with a College and Careers group of about 6. Due to logistical circumstances I wasn't able to ride up or back with them but I was able to meet them for most of the day and had a blast while doing it...I even got to catch the tail end of a World Cup game, which included a rather unique experience, but more on that later.

In my last blog I did a little blurb on the Stanley Cup (umm...the Superbowl of Hockey). This time around, I was interested in a sport that took on a world stage: The FIFA World Cup, held this year in Germany. Like the Winter Olympics, this event came every four years and varied on which country played host. Early on in the tournament, my family picked which country they figured would win the cup. Not knowing much about it, I picked a team which was relatively well known for playing the game of football (yes, it's football. Soccer is the (North) American name for it because AMerican Football is more like rugby): Brazil. Another favourite was Germany. I predicted (wrongly however) that Brazil would meet Germany in the finals and Brazil would win. However, I was very wrong.

Neither team made it into the finals, although Germany earned a Bronze medal by beating Portugal. This bronze medal game was one I caught the last 25 minutes of but while watching it I had an experience that was rather unique. At Wonderland, it happened to be Muslim Day at Wonderland and the park was filled with people of the Muslim faith. In the restaurant where the Park was displaying the game on two big screen televisions, I watched the game with a crowd made predominantly of them, but others too. Seeing no empty tables, I decided to take a seat across the table from a young gentleman who was eating a basket of fries and watching the game as well. I was reveling in the crowd as they (and I) cheered when Germany scored and I cheered with them as Portugal scored (and ooh'd when there were close ones), even though it was Portugal's first goal and Germany had 3 with less than 5 min left to play. In extra time (2 min I think) I struck up a conversation with the fellow across from me and learned that he was originally rooting (sp?) for the Iranian team, who won one, tied one, and lost one, which was more than I could say for the Canadian team, which had lost all of their matches the last time they played in the World Cup (1986, Mexico). But since Iran was out, he was hoping that France would win the World Cup finals on Sunday against Italy. I wished him luck as we went our ways after the game (Germany won 3-1) and headed to the exit of the park. But it was the entire atmosphere of the place that seemed so nice for me. There, in that room, it didn't matter what faith anyone was, what colour they were or, even that they were going for the opposing team. They were all there to see football being played and the fellowship that took place was just amazing.

Racial Ethnic Slurs

Fast forward to Sunday's Game. The hallowed game which all FIFA World Cup teams try their darndest to get to. At about 2pm EDT, Italy would face off against France in a football game watched by more people around the world than the Superbowl. It was a very close game, having played a full two hours of football plus minutes (with breaks at 45 minutes and 90 minutes) then going to shootouts. It was here that Italy was able to take the win.

Yet on Monday morning, while the victory did have its part in the news there was another event that had its part and dominated the sports news stories as the week went on. In the latter part of the game France's football hero, Zinedine Zidane, who had come out of retirement to play in this tournament, head butted an Italian player. After some discussion, the referee handed Zidane a red card, kicking him out of the game. But wait. The plot thickens. Listening to talk radio at work (it's the only station I get) I heard experts in the soccer/psychiatry/French field talking about it and the consensus among them was that they were shocked that Zidane would do such a thing and so the media started to ask one of the more common questions nowaways: Why? Zidane was such a nice guy before it happened so what happened to make him headbutt a guy in a game to receive a red card. A review of the footage showed that moments earlier, Zidane had had an altercation with Marco Materazzi, an Italian player. The two exchanged words, though nobody knows what they were. Those words that Materazzi said on camera became the focus in finding out what Materazzi said.

Now this part is where it gets kinda nuts. In trying to figure out if what Materazzi said had caused the head butt, media (more notably from France and Italy) hired lip-readers to see if they could translate or decipher what was said. And though their answers always came out different, the speculation was that an exchange of racial slurs took place, something that has apparently plagued the tournament in the past. This time, it had enraged Zidane to the point where he snapped and headbutted Materazzi in the chest.

So what if they do find that Materazzi did utter a racial slur (though he denies anything of the sort) that provoked Zidane? Will the French feel that Zidane was justified in his action and seek some sort of retribution upon Materazzi? Will Zidane be restored to his Hero status in France while Materazzi is known as a racist player?

Racial slurs come in many different forms and they are mainly used to identify (offensively) people of a different ethnic origin. Each nationality probably has some way of slurring the other nationalities offensively.

I was going to blog further on this but have decided against it for now as we are starting to get into more sensitive ground and I have not decided how I want to approach this if I want to approach it at all (plus I will have to review the blogger.com terms of agreement).