Asian Tour delayed: time for random thoughts

By: Isaiah | August 10th, 2007

Barcelona’s Asian Tour ends with a final game in Hong Kong, but it was suspended for today and will be played tomorrow, Saturday, at 8:30am EST. Apparently Mother Nature wanted to see how the “trident” of Ronaldinho, Eto’o, and Henry faired in their second game, but forgot her own power. I prefer to think of it that way rather than as her being a Madridista attempting to keep the forces of Good from gaining wider popularity. In case you’re wondering, the 8 on the Beaufort scale that the typhoon received corresponds to a tropical storm in American terminology, with winds of up to 55mph (47 knots). While not particularly scary, especially if you’re from Florida, as we’ve all learned from Katrina (in case we didn’t know it before, what with all the historical evidence), it’s the storm surge that causes so much damage, not generally the wind.

So, instead of discussing how well the team did on the field, it’s back to the locker room nonsense that occasionally makes me gag. After all, I am a fan of this game primarily for the sport itself, not the background noise. There is a report out in Sport claiming Everton is interested in Santi Ezquerro. Hopefully any deal that will be done is done soon, so that we can get a better idea of who will be around, not that Ezquerro is a vital cog in the wheel, but with Gudjohnsen (Guðjohnsen to you purists) out and a transfer target of a couple of EPL teams (West Ham, Man City), Ezquerro continues to get preseason playing time. I still rate him behind Maxi Lopez, though. And certainly behind Gio Dos Santos and probably even Bojan.

Anyway, there has been a little bit of a discussion in the comments of a recent post in which user Atleti wrote: “Barcelona are frequently given to a holier-than-thou attitude.” While that’s a general description of most clubs and fans, I think, Atleti has a point here in a way. It was, literally, illustrated by Futbolitis, a daily cartoon that appears in Sport and which I have linked several times.

Ronaldinho: Thulam, don’t you think we’ve spent too much time on oriental soil?
Thuram: Now that you say something, I think you’ll right.

For you non-Spanish speakers, in the cartoon, all of the r’s are replaced with l’s in the classic and stereotypical “Asian” speech pattern. If Barcelona fans laugh at this, if they think “oh, that’s so clever!” then they’re no better, in many ways, than the Zaragoza fans who made monkey noises at Eto’o a couple of years ago. Though it’s not as proactively racist as carrying swastika flags and beating up minorities, the subtle ways in which these cartoons imply that racism is okay is completely unacceptable. Atleti has a point if FCB can go from decrying the way Eto’o is treated as abominable to allowing their journalistic mouthpiece to spew the same images and ideas. It’s hypocritical and no matter what you think of the relationship between clubs and newspapers, if FCB stepped up and said “No more of that”, either the artists or the publishers would stop doing it.

Look at the image, really look at it. The caricatures remind me of the WWII era “yellow peril” propaganda posters, but they’re a just a bit more cleaned up, a little less obvious in their statements. In Futbolitis and Pelotazos (which appears in El Mundo Deportivo), black players are portrayed pretty badly, their physical characteristics highlighted in typical caricature fashion, but also their lips and noses are accentuated in ways that white players aren’t. Is it telling that it’s Ronaldinho and Thuram featured in this? I don’t know, but it seems to me that it is. Asians are also portrayed as bucktoothed and bright yellow, which is, of course, offensive.

FCB should step up and say something about this. There’s just no reason to allow this sort of racism to spread and grow, which is exactly what it does when it’s espoused in newspapers. No doubt it’s read by children every day and they get a convoluted sense of the world and what is and what isn’t acceptable. Just a mini rant, sorry.