Friday, February 10, 2006
What if Packer fans behaved like Muslim extremists?
Iowahawk, back after a long hiatus, ponders our own homegrown social pathology:
Bwahahahaha! If you have ever lived in the upper Midwest, or are merely a student of its culture, you're a fool if you don't read the whole thing.
Like a pot of bratwurst left unattended at a Lambeau Field pregame party, simmering tensions in the strife-torn Midwest boiled over once again today as rioting mobs of green-and-gold clad youth and plump farm wives rampaged through Wisconsin Denny’s and IHOPs, burning Texas toast and demanding apologies and extra half-and-half.
The spark igniting the latest tailgate hibachi of unrest: a Texas newsletter's publication of caricatures of legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi....
But by far the fiercest demonstration took place in Green Bay's Lambeau Shrine parking lot where throngs of Packer faithful burned Texas flags and effigies of Roger Staubach as Lutheran pastors led them in chants of "Those who defame the Vince suck" and "Favre is Great." Many of the frenzied demonstrators were seen ritualistically beating themselves with mozzarella sticks...
Over the past five years, the volatile Midwest has produced violent rage like the knockwurst output at Milwaukee's venerable Usinger's -- sudden, repeated, and in long unbroken strings. One of the principle catalysts was the rise the Uff Da insurgency, led by the enigmatic Pastor Duane Gunderson, who seek a unified Lutheran caliphate stretching from the Great Plains to Lake Huron, and the banning of non-Big 10/Pac 10 apostates from the Rose Bowl. Gunderson remains in hiding, but his influence was seen last year in the widely publicized Lutefisk desecration riots that rocked the Heartland amid the pancake breakfast holidays.
Still, outside of the Dells and a handful of violent outposts near its western Mississippi River border, Wisconsin remained a relatively calm exception to the Midwestern maelstrom surrounding it -- a fact that experts attribute to subtle differences in culture and religion.
"Unlike the ultra-extreme, radical Lutheran sectarians of Iowa and Minnesota, most ethnic Wisconsinites belong to the Wisconsin Lutheran Synod," said Joseph Killian, a Midwestern Studies professor at Emory University in Atlanta. "And if you add in three Super Bowl titles, easier access to beer, and walleye fishing, and you're going to have a much calmer and more stable culture." [Dang, that's good. - ed.]
All that would change in November with the publication of four cartoons in a Texas office newsletter -- cartoons that today have brought this once happily beer-goggled society to the precipice of all-out culture war.
Bwahahahaha! If you have ever lived in the upper Midwest, or are merely a student of its culture, you're a fool if you don't read the whole thing.
2 Comments:
By 
go.123, at
Fri Feb 10, 10:18:00 PM:
I've been to muslim countries. But I've never been to a sports riot.
By TigerHawk, at
Fri Feb 10, 11:17:00 PM:
I didn't say there weren't some points of departure.
