Читать книгу One Game at a Time. Why Sports Matter онлайн

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I didn’t mind too much: I get people walking out on my talks here and there and figure that if you don’t piss some people off you’re being far too bland. I just carried on my way but as I was talking I could see the man at the back of the audience, listening in, but also waving his arms around and talking to people loudly and passionately. So I was prepared when the mic opened for questions and he barrelled in and proceeded to rip me a new one. He talked at some length about how disrespectful I was to be glib about something as meaningless as sports, that I was being wasteful of everyone’s time when there were so many important issues to talk about and that talking about sports was just callow. He also mentioned that he really wanted to punch me “right in the face.”

A fellow member of the panel was clearly freaked out and tried to diffuse the situation, and the audience visibly tensed up, but I kind of liked it. I mean I’m never thrilled about being so aggressively taken to task in public (or in private really!), but I was genuinely interested, even excited by his point, and took his threat as metaphorical, not actual. I badly wanted to take the argument up, but it didn’t seem like the right place to get into it, so I just said that I respected his opinion, was sorry that he was upset, but that I held to the value of sports and didn’t think it was disrespectful in any way. Then we moved on.