Silly Gestures Out in the Open

28-year-old Northern Ireland striker David Healy mimicked a Protestant Orange marcher during a friendly for Fulham FC in front of visiting fans from Celtic Glasgow, a team whose supporters are predominantly catholic. Healy is coming off of a good year; he was recently awarded The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. It’s a title apparently bestowed on those who don’t know how to pick a scuffle, because Celtic Glasgow have around nine million fans worldwide. During his apology, Healy said, “I made a silly gesture, which I regret.”

Silly gestures have a way of causing unintended flare-ups. In Franz Grillparzer’s 1823 tragedy in five acts, König Ottokars Glück und Ende, Rudolf and Ottokar are constantly at it. Rudy is the king of Austria, an upstart Hapsburg who keeps on winning, while Otto is the king of nearby Bohemia, a wise pilsener drinker who keeps on losing wars to Rudy. Finally, they agree to a fragile peace accord (see “Tenuously linked allusions to Northern Ireland Good Friday Agreement 1998”). Otto has to fulfill one tiny condition, a silly gesture in the privacy and seclusion of the imperial tent, where he will kneel before Rudy and receive a ton of fiefs in return.

As he kneels, Zawisch, an unfaithful servant (who’s sleeping with Otto’s young wife), opens the tent ever so slightly to publicly expose King Otto’s silly gesture. Unable to bear this humiliation Otto goes apeshit and, surprise!, surprise!, renewed aggression between the armies ensues.

I give Healy the benefit of the doubt. He was probably trying to be funny or light-hearted, and soccer professionals aren’t known for being bright. But the English Premiership and the Irish Football Association don't see humor in it – they are investigating Healy for bigotry and sectarianism.

Manners for Romantic Liaisons or Stadium Beer

Manners haven’t always been old-fashioned. They were cutting-edge in the heyday of the Enlightenment. (Maybe I shouldn’t use “heyday” for the Enlightenment. How about, “at the sensible and sagacious midpoint of the Enlightenment”?)

A great lesson in manners is a 1771 novel-in-letters called Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim by Sophie von La Roche – whose protagonist is also named Sophie. Lord Derby feigns benevolence to the poor in order to impress the virtuous Sophie, a self-proclaimed anglophile. They have a sham marriage, Derby gets tired of her, he marries another woman, he doesn’t tell Sophie but does try to kill her in the Highlands, she is saved by crofters, and the bad-mannered seducer croaks. Later, Sophie bumps into the guy she’s liked all along, a real mister good-manners named Seymour. They marry and live happily ever after. Their partnership is an enlightened one, based on politeness and mutual respect, which offers Sophie the scope to act upon her convictions: “Gesinnungen müssen Handlungen werden,” translates as, sentiments must be turned into deeds, which is an advocacy for virtue based on education – or, learn some manners, people!

Manners were progressive in the eighteenth century, but today they seem truly misplaced. Case in point, this advice from Austria’s etiquette guru Thomas Schäfer-Elmayer for the Euro 2008 tournament held last month:

Anyone with a ticket to see a game is likely to spend several hours next to a complete stranger and there too appropriate behaviour is required.

"It's not the done thing to introduce yourself in the stadium. But at first, one should address other adults formally." [Referring to the “Siezen” format in spoken German.]

And if a fellow fan, overcome by joy, was to spill his favourite drink on you: "I would urge him to be more careful and then keep my distance."

Without being aggressive, one should be able to prevent further unwanted interaction.

"I would give him a look to dampen his enthusiasm and put an end to all conversation," says Schaefer-Elmayer.

(AFP; June 4, 2008)

And with that, we've learned that Herr Schäfer-Elmayer has never been to a soccer game.

Shhh! I'm Spying Here.

Sepp Blatter, president of Fifa, has inexplicably closed an investigation into spying launched by Danish women’s national team coach Anne Dot Eggers during the Women’s World Cup. (Blatter is also a member of the International Olympic Committee; the olympics will be held in Beijing next month.) Here’s one of the many strange incidents that happened to Denmark’s team, which had a match against the host team China, during the World Cup in 2007:

“The day before their game with China they planned a tactics talk in a seminar room at the Howard Johnson hotel.

‘Our officials saw a black mirror on the back wall and were joking, do you think something is going on in there?’ recalled Anne. They looked hard and saw movement. The hotel manager was called to unlock the door and inside were two men with video cameras.

‘They tried to get out with their cameras and had to be held back by our officials. Then policemen turned up and got the two guys away. It seemed they were protecting them.’”
(from reporter Andrew Jennings)

Here’s an embarassing video of that incident:



Sepp Blatter’s termination of the investigation is a typical retreat into silence when it comes to past spying. Monika Maron takes on the issue with ambivalence in Stille Zeile Sechs (English title, Silent Close No. 6), novel, 1991.

The protagonist Rosa Polkowski met Herbert Beerenbaum, a veteran communist of her father’s generation, by chance not long before his death. Beerenbaum was a communist party functionary responsible for the programs of ideological education at universities, which ruined careers out of mere suspicion. Rosa agreed to type his memoirs per his dictation in twice weekly sessions at his residence in the Stille Zeile, a road reserved for the party elite in the former East Germany. Irritated by Beerenbaum’s self-righteous pride and inability to honestly acknowledge his past of spying, she vents her mounting hatred by confronting him with his guilt. The old man suffers a heart attack he can’t recover from.

A Cure for Arrogance

In Hartmann von Aue’s most famous non-Arthurian work, Der arme Heinrich (AD 1195), nobleman Heinrich is struck with leprosy at the height of his prosperity. His life was too indulging, too focused on the here-and-now, and not directed at all on the hereafter. At the peak of his arrogance an incurable disease sends the party-boy in a frenzy to find a cure. He visits a specialist doctor in distant Salerno who claims to have a remedy for leprosy: Find a child who’s willing to die for your cure.

Today the current greatest soccer player in the world, Cristiano Ronaldo, undergoes surgery on his ankle at a specialist in Amsterdam, not at his home in Manchester. The party-boy plays beautiful soccer with a noticeably stiff and upright posture, contrary to the crouched athletic pose we’re usually told to use to prevent injury. Ronaldo is at the height of his fame and spoils the tabloids with his arrogance and exploits. Maybe they’ll insert a modicum of modesty during the operation and hopefully he’ll be back to playing awesome soccer again soon.

In Hartmann’s work, Heinrich finds a peasant’s daughter willing to sacrifice herself for him. They travel to Salerno together; while the girl lies naked on the doctor’s table, Heinrich peeks through the operation room door’s keyhole and gazes upon her. He suddenly changes his mind. The girl protests because she wanted to see what heaven was like, but Heinrich can’t allow her to be killed for his sake. On their way home, Heinrich is unexpectedly cured. He experiences a new way of being good (in Middle High German, “eine niǔwe güete”), and lives a more modest and still prosperous life as the peasant girl’s husband. The story contains one of the common instances in the Middle Ages of marriage between different familial ranks, which has probably become more uncommon today.

Where Discord Is Good

Bayern Munich introduced their new coach to the media this week. He’s none other than my favorite Californian, Jürgen Klinsmann. According to the AFP, “some 20 photographers walked out of the press conference in protest over Bayern's insistence they had just three minutes to photograph the new coach.” There’s obviously strife between the institution trying to manage its public image and the reporters expressing dissension, at least among photographers.

That’s good! Bad things happen when there’s accord and collusion between institutions and the media.

In Heinrich Böll’s 1974 novella, The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, the police leak expurgated evidence about an innocent protagonist to the Zeitung, an allusion to the real-life Bild Zeitung, the most widely read newspaper in the country. Katharina Blum is a cleaning lady whose friends call her “the nun” because of her prudishness. During a drunken carnival party in Cologne, she has a one-night stand with (unbeknown to her) a suspected RAF terrorist. The press humiliate her, incriminate her, brand her a dangerous communist, and eventually instigate her murder of the vulgar and insensitive reporter Tötges. Why does she become violent even though more reputable newspapers are out there exhonerating her? The answer lies in the fact that everyone only reads the Zeitung in Katharina’s world, the working classes and the petit-bourgeoisie. Böll’s novella is a fitting warning for American society and the ascendancy of Fox News, which recklessly colludes with the military and White House.