perfidy

As Nigel Tufnel said in This Is Spinal Tap,

"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever."

The surprising thing is not that bumfights.com is popular, it's that it's not more popular. I can understand your temptation to draw parallels between the late Roman Empire and the United States, but that would mean returning to the month-long discussion on empire I thought we'd settled. (Dear readers... if you can get the archives to work, look anywhere in late March. If you dare.)

Bloodsports are eternal. Did you know that the most popular sport in Pittsburgh at the end of the eighteenth century was eye-gouging? Well, wrestling, but eye-gouging was an accepted move. There are accounts of travellers from the East pulling into Pittsburgh in the 1780s and '90s, and coming away aghast, not only at the dirt and backwardness, but at the incredible number of one-eyed men. You can read about it too, in Thomas P. Slaughter's excellent "The Whiskey Rebellion." Leaving aside the fact that it was Pittsburgh, the residents of the area were no more than one or two generations removed from their ancestral homes in Northern England, Scotland, and Ireland, where similar traditions prevailed.

Or even the code duello that claimed Aaron Burr's life-- that's a refined and codified version of a knife-fight. Or Andrew Jackson's famous temper-- same dealie. Hell, ever watch amateur hockey or rugby, or friday night fights?

My point is, although the modern age makes it easier than ever before for hooligans to entice insane homeless people to fight each other for money, the tendency toward such behavior has always been with us in Western civilization. Whether it's sublimated into fencing, Marquis of Queensbury rules boxing, and football, or out in the open like dog- or cockfights, blood spectacle is an integral part of our culture. For me, the remarkable thing is not that the United States is once again like Rome, but that we've come so far without actually, erm, "civilising." That's spelt with an "s" for full Victorian effect, please note, which is my signal that I don't wish to get into discussions of biological determinism or Whiggish progress.

* A note about the title: you really need to own this album by the Minutemen. Then you will understand. And your life will be changed, forever.