Making Us Look Worse Than We Are

The Super Bowl is one of the most watched sporting events in the world. It's not the World Cup final, but it gets a lot of coverage. And that means it's shown in places where American football doesn't appear that often, and watched by people who aren't necessarily big American football fans. So I expect that the crowd reaction to the introduction of Chicago Bears co-Captain Muhsin Muhammad took a lot of people, particularly those watching from outside the USA, aback. The Bears fans in the crowd called out, as they apparently do whenever he's introduced or makes a good play, "Mooooose!" as a play on his first name.

To anyone who doesn't know that's what's going on, it sounds like they're booing, and it probably takes little more to assume that they're booing him because his name is Muhammad. I certainly saw that popping up on blogs yesterday. Not having followed Da Bears that much, I wasn't aware of it either, but I figured that must have been what was happening, as I did not think the fans could be that crass and stupid. But I suspect that the worldwide audience expects American to be that crass and stupid. Cheryl says the announcers on her coverage didn't explain what was happening. I doubt many others were either.

Sigh. Americans cannot necessarily be proud of themselves for many of their actions, but this was not a racist act by Stupid American Football Fans.

Ironically, according to his Wikipedia entry (which can't necessarily be considered authoritative), he's apparently a Christian.

Super Bowl Viewing Figures

Having seen the discussion about the viewing audience for the Super Bowl and other big events, Cheryl wrote to me about some things she dug up, and with her permission, I'm re-posting it here:

( About Those Figures )