> Noam is right. This is exactly sports' function in the US. And yet, I'm a
> big sports fan. Willing dupe? Slave to nostalgia?
No, Noam is full of shit, even fuller than usual. Sports are a commodity like any other. They don't have any magic power that makes them more narcotic than Nair or Budweiser, or books criticizing American foreign policy. If he wanted to be consistent here, he'd say that art, music, movies, everything we call entertainment, is an opiate and distraction. But he can't really say that, and so he's just moralizing.