You Can’t Escape Politics: The Goofy Bridge Edition

Oh, for the love of Pete, can’t we do anything without bringing our cliched, silly politics into it?

In the genteel world of bridge, disputes are usually handled quietly and rarely involve issues of national policy. But in a fight reminiscent of the brouhaha over an anti-Bush statement by Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks in 2003, a team of women who represented the United States at the world bridge championships in Shanghai last month is facing sanctions, including a yearlong ban from competition, for a spur-of-the-moment protest.

At issue is a crudely lettered sign, scribbled on the back of a menu, that was held up at an awards dinner and read, “We did not vote for Bush.”

Yeah! Take that evil Chimpy McBu$hHitlerburton! You’ll quake in your boots now that a few bridge players have put you in your place! Bush Lied! Clubs are Trump!

The women are facing some disciplinary action from their bridge organization for their little moment of beclowning, including a one-year suspension. They’re not very happy about that, only recently having learned that a private group can punish speech it deems harmful to it or its members. You’d think that someone smart enough to play bridge would be smart enough to know that, too. Apparently not.

What I find odd is that these ace bridge players weren’t savvy enough to use their opponents’ Bush hatred against them. I’ve not played the game a lot, but what I’ve played took a certain amount of calm and strategic thinking. I’m fairly sure that you can’t think very calmly and strategically when the veins in your head are bulging out and you’re bending your brain looking for new ways to say “Bush Lied”. You have to figure that just a couple casual words in support, say, of Guantanamo Bay or against a favored tyrant would net you a couple easy rubbers. Instead, these weak sisters just kind of ducked their heads and smiled meekly
and held up their white flag. Sad, and not very smart at all.

And well out of place. What these ladies should have done is reminded the Bush-haters that they were at a bridge tournament and not a political convention and that good manners prohibit the discussion of politics at a table where it is not welcome. I’m fairly sure that reminding your fellow bridge players of their manners would have solved the problem.

Then you beat the stuffing out of them and taunt them relentlessly from the winners’ podium. Maybe you even stack the losers up in a pyramid and have one of your team point at them and laugh while you take pictures.

(via Hot Air)

UPDATE: How, oh how did I manage to overlook where the bridge team made their brave stand for freedom?

Let’s see if we got this right…
These players are concerned about interrogation techniques (waterboarding) and foreign policy issues (Gitmo) while playing cards in China(?)
Come again?

Did they not notice they were playing cards in Communist China?

China- The same country that harvests prisoner’s body organs- The same country that jails Christians and people of faith- The same country that murdered 30-40 million of its own citizens less than 50 years ago.
Do these pampered loons have any perspective of history?

Now they’re whining about freedom of speech?
They probably didn’t notice the lack of protesters on the street in Shanghai.
…Or anywhere in China.

Thanks to Sister Toldjah for that link. Man, how could I have missed that?

UPDATE 2: Mahablog says that the women acted correctly because they were being threatened and as we all know, the best response to being threatened is to throw up our hands and surrender.

But what this tells me is that wingnuts don’t get out much. These days, for Americans, to go abroad is to be treated with, at the very least, caution. We may look normal on the surface, but at the least provocation we may grow tusks and root up the shrubberies.

But these ladies appear to have run into some outright hostility, and they were trying to diffuse the situation. Any emotionally mature person might have done the same thing, which is why wingnuts don’t understand it.

Outright hostility? There was nothing in the article to suggest that there was anything beyond the normal amount of ill-informed Bush-bashing. Am I to believe that a polite and calm request to lay the politics aside and remember the reason they’re at the table to begin with would not have diffused the situation?

It certainly would have, and it would have done so without the low-rent puling, too. Not for nothing does the Bible say, “a soft answer turneth away wrath…”.

It’s a little thing we “wingnuts” call manners. We still happen to believe in them and we like to believe that the rest of the civilized world does too. One must assume that normal people sitting at a normal bridge table with the intention of playing bridge would not leap to the attack, flicking deadly playing cards with the accuracy of a movie ninja aiming for your unprotected jugular.

But perhaps I just don’t get out into Fantasy Ninjaland where Maha seems to travel.

You know what might have been amusing, though? Watching the French taunters response to: “So, how does it feel to have elected a President who just gave a speech praising the United States to the high heavens? I believe it was your bid?”

Heh.

Lastly, I just can’t resist a better bit of counter-snark. At the end of her post she writes:

But what does it say about a nation that allows a dummy to be its head of state for eight years?

That the dummy in question proved smarter than you, since he managed to convince people his ideas were preferable to yours?