World Cup Context

Football Is Life?

Copacabana?  Perhaps not....

The long-running tendency of the American mainstream media to reduce Brazil to a simple love of football has to come to an end this summer.  Here are the news headlines on Google after searching for "Brazil politics":

Public pessimism reigns in Brazil as World Cup looms
Sao Paulo's looming water crisis
Brazil bracing for widespread anti-government, World Cup protests

Brazil's World Cup party can't hide the country's tensions

Spend it like you stole it....

Brazil border Cup operation nets 40 tons of drugs

Anti-World Cup protests across Brazil

W. Cup to decide Brazil's political future

Things aren't great in Brazil, and while the bongos, beaches, bikinis and football may gloss it over, it's time to see the nation for what it is.  Certainly, Brazilians should take pride in their football, and do...but they are also fighting to address much more pressing issues and the spectators of the coming tournament should demand more than tourist video of the countryside set to smooth samba beats; the media should do their job this June and uncover the real Brazil.

ESPN will lead the charge (read about the Bristol Invasion here) and needs to stop shirking journalism for lame regurgitation of the typical presentation of Brazil.  This sort of foolishness needs to stop.  Americans who don't like soccer don't matter anymore.  And this crap isn't likely to convince them to start liking it:

Fernanda asserts: "Most samba steps and the most spectacular football dribbles have the same base. It's all in the hips and in your ability to follow the rhythm." article here

Pretty sure the football-haters aren't going to head out to the sports bars to watch the USMNT play against a bunch of dancers...And, anyway, we've been hearing this junk about Brazil since the 1990 tournament and the first modern-era appearance by the USMNT (thanks Paul Caliguiri!):

Let's give the Brazilian people what they deserve.  If this tournament was an ill-begotten affair, a dereliction of duty by the leaders of that nation, let's hear it.  Let's see the favelas and the corruption.  Let's enjoy the beautiful game as a reminder of what great things we can do, even when the context is lousy; let's enjoy football as a reminder of what Brazil should be, and the World Cup as an event which brings light to dark places, antiseptic to the infection of corruption, ineffective leadership and dysfunctional society.

Ready or not, the tournament is coming to town...let's hope it serves as a harbinger of better times for the nation.