For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for June 23, 2015

It’s a never ending tug of war between sports and arts. Too bad we can’t figure out how to have both…

Sports: close up pictures of really well constructed young men is the best part. They should smile more, too.

I hate sports, I like the arts!

Sports: Vicarious exercise for lazy men (whose only real exercise is gambling on sports).

Studies have shown that arts events bring in more economic activity in the surrounding area by far than sports events do. People who attend concerts, theatre or art exhibits are more likely to also go out to a local restaurant or club, or to browse and shop at local stores. A ball game is more of a self-contained event and there’s less spill-over to local businesses. Art. Works.

At my high school, every other year, the seniors who took German, Spanish or French classes through level 4 and had a 3.0 average, got to take a 2 week trip to Germany, Mexico or France. It was every other year because the school alternated allocating funds to the football team and the music, art, language and science programs. My class was supposed to take the trip abroad, but two weeks before arrangements were going to be made, the football team’s head coach demanded new uniforms and more equipment…

Lynn’s Notes:

This was my one bit of grandstanding in support of the arts. From community to community and from school to school, it always seems that athletics are better funded and better equipped than anything else. We called it, “The jocks VS the smocks.”

I like both sports and the arts (admittedly in that order) and have been on Boards in both. I’m a little dubious about the claim above that the arts generate more local revenue than sports because there aren’t too many orchestras or ballet companies that draw 2 million people a year to their concerts like Major League Baseball teams do. Does anyone seriously think that 25,000 people attending a ballgame have less peripheral economic impact on a community than 2,000 people attending the symphony?

You can find economic studies to fit your argument whether sports mean more money for local businesses because there are plenty on both sides of the argument…sort of like climate change. The bottom line is that, right or wrong, more people are interested in sports than the arts…reailty is what it is. 

Almost every other “civilized” country in the world supports the arts — along with healthcare, gun control, and family friendly leave policies and support to new parents… And the U.S. thinks it’s the “greatest county in the world…”

I wonder if @howtheduck knows he/she has been quarantined (profile shows no Recent Comments; only he/she can see them and earlier comments). The Moderator is who handles such things.

Rather watch an ant farm than that!

Yet the family was able to recount how many times she said ‘um’ and ‘you know’

So her basis seems to be “if people will not support the arts on their own free will, they should be forced to do so through taxation”. I will not go into a story spoiler, but the way Elly resolves this does not help her in the long run by way of workplace alliances.

one way tickets for the sports teams should work.

Sports trumps everything.

As a non-native English speaker, could anyone help me out with the meaning of “pre-empted” here? None of the translations from the dictionary make sense to me…