Flying Fecking Team Colors.

I have read several of the groups' posts about the teams and they are truly awesome. I froze up on this subject. I started pondering all those little connections involved in really being a full on team fan, watching team sports on TV at home, especially at the holidays, team colors and paraphernalia, etc.

I kind of sank into my pondering, and was unable to find the funny or the quirk. It was a relief to read the posts of those who did.

I played team sports for a while, and right up until I stopped, I was pretty good at it and enjoyed it a lot. I have though, never fully gotten into talking about or watching team sports, professional or otherwise. Maybe I dug it a bit, when I was young and it was always football, and always the Dallas cowboys, with my dad and maybe some friends around. But later, as I got older, I found that though I enjoyed watching a game enough, my tendency to root for and pay attention to individual players based upon the number on their jerseys, regardless of which team they played on, this tendency could make real die hard fans on either side who may be watching with me ...pretty pissed off, for some reason. I tended to prefer eights or threes, alone or in whatever combination, and sometimes sevens or fives, and also some other patterns which seemed important but are now hard to either remember or explain.....the point is I have been accused of killing the buzz with my, er, banter, and was perhaps not invited again next time. I don't get why.

Maybe it's that neither side could be sure I was on their "team" even if I might like one or more of their players, and clearly (or clear to most) THAT is NO FUN. Clearly defined boundaries and identity are very important in team sports. The very thing with teams and hardcore fans is all that us-versus-them and mob rule stuff that it taps into in all of us. I know I have that primal thing within me just as much as the next, but I also say it sort freaks me out, and I shy away from it.

Along the lines of us-versus-them, I thought I would share with you all a (hopefully) small part of Zurich and Swiss culture, that we seem to be bombarded with during voting times here:

Hate Mongering Political Billboards from the "Swiss People's Party", the SVP.

Whoo-hoo! It is immigration debate time! Apparently one team wears red and white and has pink skin and probably fair hair, and the other team is pretty much everybody else.

IN the fall of 2007, it was this one:



Notice the evicted sheep. Nice. "Sicherheit Schaffen" translates to "create security".

There was another at the time which showed a red Swiss passport in the center and about seven hands reaching into the frame to clutch at the passport. Most of the hands (except one, so not all) were brown or black.

And now, since one week ago, the latest:



To me, this looks like the kind of thing that should be in some museum somewhere in the Southern United States. Or possibly some sort of WWII relic. I cannot believe that this is a current acceptable political campaign in Switzerland.

So...just in case you thought Zurich was all chocolate and cheese and cows, and precision watches and excellent public transport and generally Brilliant Design, and the "temperance" and "tolerance" of the Swiss temperament...well, no, I am here to tell you, they have some shit slingers here too.

The SVP is not a tiny political party in Switzerland. Also, by sheer numbers of these billboards hitting the streets, the SVP has quite some cash to spend. In the minds these types, I believe, after 911 certainly, and further after 7/7/7 (July 7, 2005) in London, especially in Europe, it became within realm of the acceptable to hate Muslims. This is not news to anyone reading this. I have had discussions, probably you have too, with people who had previously been reasonable, peace-loving, Christian- seeming people who became zealous across-the-board haters in the face of these circumstances. In this political climate, the debate here now is about accepting immigrants seeking asylum, and which countries' citizens qualify. It seems anyone dark skinned and maybe not Christian is targeted here. SVP is using this provocative image to spark the fears which are typical in a debate of this kind, the fears which say, "they are taking our jobs, our resources, diluting our culture, and teaching our children to paint graffiti." Har har. Blah blah. Their rhetoric is to do with "not harboring criminals", etc...but in cases where the foreign governments claiming said asylum-seekers are criminal are themselves criminal, nothing is so black and white.

Well tonight one of these posters just turned up at my home tram stop. There may be a little graffiti in my future as well. Sharpie ready. Arggh.