Davenport, Iowa City & Des Moines, Iowa: Fields of Opportunities

The roads leading out of Illinois and in to rural Iowa are as uniform as the land they dissect: straight, uncompromising plains interspersed with farm land, rugged terrain and crops.  Yet the rural United States, for all its apparent monotony, has stood the test and ravages of time.  The story of America is very much a narrative of battle: for the Republic and for the land.  Without this rolling countryside of livestock and agriculture, the westward pioneers would have struggled in their relentless advance across the vast expanses of the union.  In this way, Iowa represents far more than corn and wheat, far more than roads that stretch away beyond comprehension.  Appearances, as Dean and I would learn during our two days here, can be deceiving.  We thought they were just fields but, as Iowa’s state-line signpost rightly proclaims, these are ‘fields of opportunities’.

Big River Keep On Rolling

It is easy to be prosaic about this country; to attach bluster and verbosity and meaning to the bedrock of America.  Occasionally situations develop where no such recourse to cadence is appropriate.  Stopping a Chevrolet Tahoe in the middle of small town Davenport, Iowa, in order to catch a live television transmission of Liverpool v Tottenham Hotspur is one such moment where blog-based bombast and hyperbole are unnecessary.  Needs must, even on a road trip.  Therefore, soon after crossing the state line from Illinois in to Iowa, Dean and I navigated our way to the Jersey Bar and Grille in the sleepy town of Davenport. 

This sports bar joint was the perfect setting in which to enjoy a burger, a drink and widescreen high-definition coverage of America’s commitment to English soccer.  The ensuing 0-0 draw is best left for the sports pages of national newspapers and the rest of the blogosphere, but there is something comforting, something utterly soothing about the fact that it is possible to find a bar in the middle of nowhere that will have a subscription to ESPN and will happily let you watch a football match taking place live six hours in the future and three thousand miles away. 

Emerging from the bar, then, Dean and I sought an immediate reconnection with America.  Davenport, Iowa, is not the easiest place to attribute significance but, with the aid of a guide book and satellite navigation system, it was at least possible to divert our route to the banks of the all-American river: the majestic, ethereal, timeless Mississippi.  In its Iowa form, the Mississippi is at some of its most northern points, formed out of streams and tributaries that drain from the glaciers of Canada and the shelves and ridges of Minnesota, Wisconsin, the Dakotas and Illinois.  Yet even in Davenport, Iowa, this surging torrent of water and mystery is already wide, deep and strong, snaking its way through the towns, cities, plains, valleys and levies of the Midwest.  The Mississippi is more than just a river, more than just a natural landmark.  Its southward flow carries both sediment and sentiment: the Mississippi has been through America’s trials and tribulations, a constant certainty in times of doubt, a recourse for transport, for survival, for wonder across centuries and generations of natives, frontiersmen and contemporary citizens.

The river’s name also lends itself to one of America’s states and, while an intended visit to Jackson, Mississippi, would hopefully present itself in the days to come, Dean and I were reminded of that state’s turbulent racial history while in Davenport, Iowa.  A barren stretch of land on the banks of the river, just two blocks from downtown Davenport, used to be home to the Davenport Natatorium, a local swimming pool and bathing complex popular in the early twentieth century after its opening in 1922. 

However, this local amenity became the focal point for a bitter conflict between the town’s wealthy white landowners and the black community during the 1950s and 1960s.  Incensed by not having access to the pool, the African-American citizens of Davenport cried out against the hardship that had been institutionalised against them.  It was a cry taken up across the United States as civil rights went from being a byword for localised troublemaking to a nationwide liberation movement.  Segregation was not limited simply to the South.  Endemic across all states of the union, it held back the progress, prosperity and prospects for happiness of many Americans of any and all colour and creed.  Friendly, liberal Iowa was no different in this respect to Alabama, Georgia and the like.

An attempted solution to the Natatorium problem in Davenport was to allow black people access to the facilities once a week, after which the pool was to be drained and refilled before being used by the white population.  This was, in the eyes of the district’s civil rights leaders, less of a compromise and more a further and deliberate separation of the people, a brazen attempt to not only define in contractual terms a disproportionate splitting of the pool’s time between the different groups, but saying in all but words to the region at large that the black community was not worthy, not clean, not entitled enough to any more than one day’s sole use of what was meant to be a recreational provision.

A number of wealthy private citizens, both black and white, raged with indignation at the injustice, and set up their own swimming pool for free use by all Davenport citizens.  This was the death knell to the now infamous Natatorium, which was eventually closed in 1977.  Today there is no sign of the pool, save for a rectangular slab of poorly fed grass on the banks of the knowing Mississippi, its course spelling progress from more sinister times.

Hawkeyes

We resolved to spend one night in Iowa and, after consulting guide books and friendly passers by, settled on the college town of Iowa City rather than the state capital of Des Moines.  Keen to have a few drinks we were told the town, with its bohemian nature and pedestrianised enclaves, would be perfect. 

A college town, home to the University of Iowa, the city is famed for its old state capital building, once the central political seat for all of Iowa, as well as its liberal arts scene, with well regarded departments for literature, music, law and philosophy.  Known as the Iowa Hawkeyes, the University competes against other Big Ten schools across the region, and takes pride in its name and badge, as was manifest to Dean and I when we were able to get a better look at the town the following day.

Our first task, however, was to check in to our hotel and warm up.  The temperature had dropped considerably with warnings of oncoming snow from more easterly regions.  This was the Midwest we had been promised, with a bitter wind, frost in the air and ice on the ground.  A perfect excuse, then, to increase our body temperatures with a helpful dose of alcoholic refreshments.  Unfortunately, the acclaimed nightlife of Iowa City was missing that Monday evening.  The bars and pubs were deserted, save for one or two hardened souls braving the freezing conditions for a nightcap or two.  Once Dean and I had completed a nutritious meal of buffalo chicken wings and associated condiments, it became clear that there was nothing to do but go to sleep.  In our separate beds.

Political Penguins

Iowa’s state capital is in Des Moines, a large and busy town around one hundred miles from Iowa City.  Before Des Moines became state capital of Iowa, Iowa City had the responsibility of being the state’s central seat of government.  Today the old State House is still in use as a museum and part of the University of Iowa.  It is an impressive structure, visible across the town and standing proudly in the middle of a number of road junctions.  American university students like to pedaconference their way around campus and so find themselves orientating their position to important landmarks.  The old State House is one such building, constructed in a deliberate Greco-Roman style to mimic both the pomp and ceremony of ancient kingdoms, and the enforced colonnade vision of the structures that were created in Chicago, Illinois, to facilitate and commemorate the 1893 World’s Fair Exhibition. 

Inside the old State House is an excellent museum, setting our helpful information and exhibits on life in Iowa City and the wider state.  The area in which the building now stands is dominated by the University of Iowa’s School of Law and the old State House museum includes a section dedicated to legal developments in the region.  Particularly illuminating was the description of the 1964 to 1969 fight by three University of Iowa students against their District School Board to overturn their expulsion for wearing black armbands on campus in support of peace in Vietnam.  In the 1960s, on college campuses across America, the modern nation was truly born, arising out of academic and pro-social intellectual development, as young Americans began to question the previous order.  Civil rights, gender equality and pacifism found new voices and causes in a melting pot of emotion and resentment against the very strongest powers of ownership and control. 

In Iowa, the three students expelled for daring to suggest that President Johnson should not have agreed to America’s involvement in Vietnam were supported by fellow students and families and appealed their case to the Supreme Court, the highest judicial body and arbiter in the land.  By 1969, some five years after their original expulsion, the Supreme Court found in favour of the students and against the School Board, enshrining via legal precedent a student’s right to freedom of expression, itself the first recorded legal decision that linked the First Amendment to the US Constitution to the specific liberties that a student could expect within an academic institution.  This was a time of developing legalese, an incremental process of reform and review, appeal and counter, which glacially began to form the foundation of a more tolerant society.

The beauty of the museum in Iowa City’s old State House was that it was able to illustrate such moments of local and national significance in an arena that also contained a bizarre exhibit of stuffed penguins.  Unfolding before our eyes in just a few square feet was the utter absurdity of America.

POTUS

Five blocks down Iowa City’s low-rise roads and sidewalks, themselves home to independent book stores and clothes shops, Hawkeye memorabilia outlets and family-run groceries, you will find the Hamburg Inn.  To the naked eye this is a standard college town diner, with plastic leather booths and an obligatory juke box, enclosed by walls lined with photographs of old patrons and punters.  However, and as set out at the start of this article, Iowa can be deceiving.  The reality is that the Hamburg Inn, whilst serving up an ample and excellent breakfast, also doubles as a critical staging post in the election of the President of the United States.

Look again at the creased, lined, black and white photos adorning the walls.  Watch carefully for the signs, the autographs, the arrows.  The seat in the far left corner was used by President Clinton.  The counter in the centre was waited on by President Reagan.  The stall at the back pictures a reclining, and sadly fictional, President Bartlet.  The Hamburg Inn is no ordinary diner; it is a destination that helps shape a national identity and the course of American history. 

American democracy is real and tangible.  You can taste it, smell it.  It works its way in to homes and schoolyards, restaurants and churches.  No candidate can win the approval of his or her own party until he or she has shaken the hands of ordinary citizens in regular towns.  To win the right to be the President you have to first become your party’s nominee, and to do that – as we are seeing right now with the Republican Party in 2012 – you have to win delegate votes from members of your own party.  Yet this is no standard ballot-based affair.  Winning the right to represent the party in a Presidential election involves influencing, cajoling, convincing ordinary men and women the length and breadth of the country.  They do not cast their votes by an ‘x’ in a box, but by a straw in a hat, a hand in the air, or a coffee bean in a jar. 

In towns and cities these hopeful souls plead with their own body politic for support, by attending town hall meetings, coffee catch-ups, question and answer sessions in high school gyms and fire stations.  It means hand shakes and milk shakes.  What is at stake for the candidates is often decided by their rapport with customers while eating steak.  To win the White House is to win the hearts and minds of Middle America, shaking every hand, kissing every baby, throwing every dart and sinking every ball. 

In the Hamburg Inn, Iowa City, candidates return year after year to vie for votes in the Iowa caucus, itself the first such event on the road to the Presidential election.  In this way, while Iowa may seem unassuming and irrelevant, it actually marks the first crucial staging post in electing the most powerful and important man or woman on the planet.  Iowans take this responsibility very seriously, and scrutinise their respective parties’ candidates with rigour. 

The Hamburg Inn hosts just one of many events that combine together to indicate what candidate will take that state’s delegates through to the next stage in the contest.  Voters arrive at the Hamburg and listen to the candidates talking and debating, answering and asking questions of themselves and their audience, all the while sipping coffee.  At the end of the session the voters throw coffee beans in to glass jars that bear the names of each of the attending candidates.  The candidate with the most coffee beans wins, and carries with them the number of delegates that turned up to the Hamburg Inn on that particular day. 

Dean and I arrived just a few weeks after both parties had rolled in to town to hold their coffee bean event.  For the Democrats it was something of a fait-acompli, given that President Obama will obviously be the nominee for his party.  For the Republicans it is far less simple, and the full suit of candidates arrived to battle it out over lattes and cappuccinos.  As it happens, Michelle Bachmann won the most votes in the Hamburg Inn but has since pulled out of the running.  Mitt Romney, who (at the time of typing this) currently enjoys a narrow lead for the Republican nomination, came in second place.

In November 2012 Americans will vote to reinstate Obama or return the Republicans to office for the first time since President George W Bush.  While we will no doubt evaluate the candidates’ respective positions when the time comes, Dean and I were happy to – for now at least – enjoy sitting in a room that has become so important in deciding its nation’s future.  Men may bring out the worst in politics, but politics can sometimes bring out the best in men.  Whether the right decision is made in November or not, whether the polarisation stalking America’s streets and communities ever takes a step closer to constructive bipartisanship, it cannot be denied that this country of such stringent ideals, of both emotional and practical idealism, takes immensely seriously its democratic principles.  It is a story as old as the American revolution itself; that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from this land.

In God We Trust

Comprehending America’s democratic process is crucial in understanding why it behaves the way it does.  Equally important is a familiarisation with this country’s burning religiosity.  From the Puritan Founding Fathers, seeking a better life in the New World, to today’s Tea Party Evangelicals, America and what it tries to stand for itself has become a religion.  For a constitution that deliberately bans the entrenchment of the church within the organs of the state, this nation’s past, present and future has been, is and always will be perennially embedded to religious belief.  “In God We Trust” roars American currency, and politicians, despite the separation of church and state, live and die by their theological outlook.

The Armana Colony, located just outside of Iowa City, is a helpful example of this very American of inconsistencies.  Similar to the more famous Amish community, the Armana settled in the United States from Germany.  This is a community of deep-rooted faith, of a strong moral conviction based on God and country; not necessarily Republican in a political sense, but ostensibly pro family: conservative with a small ‘c’. 

Political and religious beliefs aside (which is perhaps sensible for two Jewish boys from London), the Armana are polite and welcoming, offering up their community to outsiders keen to learn more about their history and culture.  Their Puritan work ethic remains even amidst the bustle of the modern world.  Dean and I were able to witness hand-made furniture carpentry, wine and chocolate making, and a genuine affection and warmth from the Armana protagonists to each other and to their visitors.  This was classic American service with a smile: polite, good natured, softly spoken.

Indeed, as Dean and I prepared to leave the community and continue our drive towards Des Moines and, later, Nebraska, an Armana member who had previously welcomed us to his furniture store drove past in his van, slowing slightly as he went by.  He rolled down his window and, with a beaming smile and courteous nod, bellowed to his two British guests the following words: “Welcome to the United States”.  It is hard to imagine that happening in many other countries.

By the People.  Of the People.  For the People.

By the time we reached the state capital of Iowa, Des Moines, the temperature had dropped considerably and it was getting dark.  Snow flakes began to fall on to roads and fields that had already recently received a heavy shower of powder.  Driving through it, across the cosmic hinterlands of farms and pastures, brooks and copses, helped reinforce just how large this nation is and reinvigorate a genuine sense of admiration for how it manages to cling so steadfastly to its original ideals despite its gargantuan mass.

Ending our stay in Iowa by visiting Des Moines, then, made perfect sense.  The United States sustains its political and ideological culture by holding resolute and unfaltering to the notion that out of many, comes one.  Iowa is but a single state out of fifty, and yet forms a decisive part of the American historical subplot.  The State Capital, with golden dome and carved eagles, bronzed doors and polished floors, rises up to the side of the city’s glass downtown, and serves as a reminder of these self-evident truths: that even in the rural, rustic Midwest it is possible to be reminded of larger macrocosmic themes amidst the minutiae of local life. 

American politics, like its justice system, is designed to be open.  It may not always work, it may suffer from prejudice or intolerance, but at the least it can be seen to be believed.  The machinations of the state are not hidden: they are deliberately accessible.  In Des Moines, as in Baton Rouge in 2009, Dean and I were able to walk right in to the State Capital Building, mixing with politicians and their advisors, photographing the State Senate and House of Representatives, rubbishing shoulders with individuals who may one day move from the State capital to the nation’s capital, from the grey engraved stone of Des Moines, to the White House in Washington DC.

We were emboldened by this clear sense of civic pride and purpose, responsibility and respect, motifs that warmed the heart if not the external temperature.  With heavier snow, but lighter hearts, the car headlights focussed on westerly ways: Omaha, Nebraska, beckoned.

~~~

"Fields"

Fog and ice and fields, Of a harvest and the yield, 
From a snow plough and a shield, Protecting Liberty and the Land. 


 Or, to put it another way, This vista will never change, 
From generations to another day, Protecting time from the sands. 


 Fields of opportunity stretching out ahead, 
Straight lined, toll-fined, Uncompromising. Dead. 
Iowa said. 

Robert 'Sammy' Samuelson 

Iowa City, Iowa - 7 February 2012.

Chicago, Illinois: Chandeliers

In Dallas, Texas, in November 2009 I noted that Dean and I would continue to live the American dream, despite being at the end of our road trip.  Since that time we have independently returned to this vast land on numerous occasions, on trips to see friends, to visit family, to battle nostalgia.  Now, twenty-seven months later, we return as the dynamic duo, a brazen double-act of new media fame, blogging, tweeting, instagraming our way across cities and statelines, in search once again for the real America, the substance to these States, to form a closer opinion of an imperfect union, to strive to comprehend the notion that, out of many, there was, is and always will be one United States of America.

Where to begin a new odyssey?  How to strive on without repetition?  Fly to Chicago, Illinois, and take it from there.

Stakes on a plane

The story begins in London, England, and sub-zero temperatures as a middle-aged father of two’s Jaguar snakes its way around the capital’s arterial support road and in to the noise and confusion of London Heathrow International Airport.  Clutching suitcase, hold-alls, guitars and camera cases, Dean and I navigated our way through Terminal 5 – a rare success story of modern British civil engineering, architecture and planning policy – and sought out touch-screen comfort on a British Airways Boeing 777. 

Travellers are hardened souls, adaptable to changing circumstances, wary but not necessarily weary of the thickets and pitfalls of contemporary international tripping.  Embarrassingly such experience stood for little when a woman of what can legitimately, if not a little rudely, be called a rotund body mass decided to sit herself down in the aisle seat beside a laughing Dean and an incandescent me.  The woman, who would not have been made to pay an excess baggage fee despite her gargantuan size (an inconsistency that British Airways should address given my lean frame and now financially damaging suitcase weight), came complete with a one month old baby on her considerably sized lap.  This baby, this spawn of the underworld, this Caliban of economy class, emitted cries of hysteria and Satanism not heard of or seen since John Proctor took one for the team.  What started as a deep, rumbling, gurgling growl of desperation formed in to a piercing, shrieking, screaming, howling, yelping curse of evil.  It was going to be a long eight hours.

Except it was not.  Fortuitously, a clever Kosovan noticed, from a few rows back, that the Faustian-pacted mother and child were separated from other members of their cult (family).  With the quick-witted decision-making skills of the very best eastern European dictators, Kosovan Woman leapt forward, suggesting that her seat be taken by the terrible twosome.  It was a Deadline Day swap deal like manna from heaven and the rest of the flight passed without incident.

Come on feel the Illinoise

One never tires of arriving in a city like Chicago.  At its best, it is a bustling, bursting metropolis of hard-working, friendly people, enjoying the city’s vantage point at the near tip of the central United States.  Its architecture, all haphazard angles and gothic skyscrapers that genuinely rival Manhattan, and its history combine to great effect to make Chicago welcoming and heart-warming in equal measure.  It is also a cleverly designed metropolis, easy to navigate through wide boulevards and avenues, resplendent in bright lights and separated by the city’s famed architectural anomalies at every turn.  Nestling adjacent to modern glass towers are stone baroque-parody cathedrals and Greco-Roman inspired political buildings, all juxtaposing with randomly situated statues and sculptures that cut across the Loop and aptly named Magnificent Mile (Michigan Avenue), which in turn are surrounded south and north by Navy Pier and both Grant and Millennium parks.

After checking in to our hotel, then, it was helpful to re-familiarise ourselves with the pedestrian nirvana that is Chicago, Illinois, stepping out on to Michigan Avenue to find caffeinated refreshments and fight off any lasting remnants of navigational amnesia.

This was followed by a relaxing use of the Hilton Garden Inn’s spa facilities.  On our previous roadtrip our student selves cared little for such amenities.  Now, hardened and chiselled by the dual responsibilities of work and precariously placed feet on slippery property ladders, such pleasures as a swimming pool and jacuzzi are not to be remissed and much of the physiological affects of a long flight were dealt with by some quick lengths and a long soak respectively.

Deep Pan Deep Thoughts

Chicago, of-course, is famed for its deep pan pizza and Dean and I had been reliably informed that Giordano’s was a suitable joint to sample the city’s famed and acclaimed take on the Italian classic.  Giordano’s is as you would expect any regular American food bar to be: widescreen sport-fuelled neon-hazed temples of calorific foodstuffs and Americana guitars.  This particular version of the modern American outlet specialised in ‘stuffed pizza’, essentially a type of pie that takes the idea of a ‘stuffed crust’ and spreads it across the entire pizza base.  It is not for the faint-hearted and certainly not the sort of pizza you can eat easily with your hands.  No, this is a cutlery affair, necessitated all the more by the gargantuan size of the pizza itself.  My original order of two medium-sized dishes for three people was laughed at by the waiter.  In this city, in this country, small means large and medium means sickeningly big.

We were met in Giordano’s by Mike Ibrahim, a friend of both Dean and I from our previous travelling experiences in America.  A former student of the University of Illinois, in Urbana-Champagne (see previous roadtrip), Mike is now at law school in Chicago.  He is also a knowledgeable and passionate supporter of the correct form of football.  There are positive and negative conclusions to reach from the generally good news that sound decision-making in what sport to follow has not completely vanished from the soul of America.  Mike’s love of the beautiful game, and his in-depth understanding of its history, culture and values, are to be applauded.  A student of soccer, Mike enjoys playing and talking about the game he loves.  It was, and is, a real pleasure to go in to such footballing depth and debate with an American citizen.  The problem, then, the negative conceit of this otherwise positive situation, comes from Mike’s stubborn supporting of the wrong North London team.  To be fair, Mike’s is a genuine and affectionate relationship with the rabble from down the Seven Sisters Road, but one cannot help but imagine just how improved the situation would have been if Mike’s horizon was shaded in blue and white, and without any hint of red.

Premier League rivalries aside, it was good to catch up with such an engaging, intelligent and polite individual and we looked forward to the night ahead, even if the jet lag began stalking our collective levels of sentiency.

Chandeliers

From Giordano’s, Dean, Mike and I took a cab south of central Chicago to visit another mutual friend, Matt Smart, at his apartment.  When Dean and I visited Champaign, Illinois, in 2009 we stayed for one night at Matt and Mike’s apartment.  Now, in Chicago, Matt was as hospitable as ever, inviting us in to his home to enjoy some drinks and meet a few more of Matt and Mike’s social scene.  TJ, Ben, Kelsey and Ian were as courteous, friendly and welcoming as Matt and Mike and invited us to join them in a drinking game called ‘Chandeliers’ before we prepared to head to the Lincoln Park area of the city for a few more drinks.

Chandeliers takes some of the skills of Beer Pong and updates them in to a more collective setting, requiring genuine quarter-flicking skills and a decent dose of luck to avoid having to down reasonably significant quantities of beer or, worse still, a central cup of continually refilled liquid poison.  Warmed by the game and the increasing amount of alcohol in our blood, we prepared to move the party on to Lincoln Park and hopefully liaise with Emily Leary, another of Dean’s friends.  Before doing so, however, Matt kindly showed Dean and I the view from the roof of his apartment block.

What a wonderful moment this was, as we gazed out across the cityscape before us, under a cloudless starlit sky.  Stretching out for miles in to the distance were the concentric lines of roads and streetlights, criss-crossed with countryside and train tracks, each leading inexorably away in one direction to the horizon and the plains of America beyond, and in the other towards the heart of the city itself, its towering mass of teeming life, light and opportunity: the metropolis, the land, the great beyond; the mystique of America crystallised on one suburban rooftop.

Eight in a taxi

There was no real reason why it transpired, but it did.  It could have been avoided, but it was not.  It should have been prevented, but it continued unabashed, unprotected, underhand.  Eight adult human beings can not, should not, fit in to one standard sized taxi cab and yet somehow we found ourselves crammed, cramped and cajoled en mass in to a feat worthy of Houdini. 

While ostensibly meant to speed up our progress to the Lincoln Park district of Chicago, the ‘eight in a cab’ magic trick brought Dean and I far closer to our hosts than perhaps any of us had wilfully anticipated or desired.  It was not pretty, nor clever, and it did little to aid Dean’s ankle ligament injury, but there we were like sardines in a tin can as our oblivious taxi driver ignored his passengers’ collective deep vein thromboses and sped away in to the night.

Mad River

We fell out of the cab in Lincoln Park, a bohemian suburb of downtown Chi-town, famed for its bars and restaurants and ambient vibe.  Alighting at Mad River, a bar frequented by locals and college students, it was clear that a number of us, myself included, needed a few moments to realign our spines before gathering our thoughts and heading in to the sweaty, boozy mayhem of Mad River. 

The bar was like many Dean and I have witnessed in our travels across America, albeit this time more colossally packed with people than many other similar variants.  Mad River was the best and worst of American nightlife, with cheap drinks, talkative natives and a musical playlist that seemed to come straight from the disc-jockey booth at esteemed establishments such as Nottingham’s Ocean or Watford’s Destiny. 

We made our home at the bar, sinking shots and mixers, talking and occasionally moving to the beat, while Dean made a bee-line for his friend, Emily Leary, who herself was in Mad River for a friend’s birthday.  Dean and Emily chatted while the rest of us enjoyed the friendly atmosphere inside the bar.  By this point we were past 2.00am and, when adding in the time difference, had been awake for over twenty-four hours.  Dean, to his credit, was still going (reasonably) strong.  I, on the other hand, was struggling and the concoction of noise and alcohol became a noxious mix of lethargy and confusion.  Bed was calling at the end of a long, but enjoyable, day and night.

Breakfast in America

You can adopt a laissez-fait attitude to the United States.  If you are so inclined you can even detest its culture of excess.  Surely, however, we can at the least agree that, while it may struggle with its polarised electorate, its confused religiosity, its internal conflict on the merits of external intervention, America knows how to breakfast.  After the dual onslaughts of jet lag and severe alcohol consumption, Dean and I awoke on Super Bowl Sunday with headaches and appetites. 

Taking to the streets of Chicago, we walked off the worst affects of the previous evening’s excesses and headed for a Magnificent Mile diner for brunch.  The United States really came in to its own with the creation of the concept of brunch.  Many will point to America’s entertainment industry, its pioneering spirit, its trade and industry, its commerce and free market liberalism as its most important and iconic exports to the waiting world.  The reality is that, while such items and philosophies have seeped their way in to the popular and political consciousness of the West, few bonafide American inventions can rank so highly as the deliberate manipulation and combination of two popular mealtimes in to one new and almighty session of consumption.  Brunch is as American as cowboys, cheerleaders, red cups and big trouble in Dodge City.  The ensuing Eggs Benedict, Salt Beef sandwiches, Tater Tots, coffees, Texas toast and fried vegetables went down a treat.

Some Like it Hot

Armed with such sustenance, Dean and I enjoyed Chicago in the cold February wind and sun.  We ventured down Michigan Avenue towards Millennium Park, pausing for pictures of the sights, including a giant model of Marilyn Monroe in her infamous ‘breeze up the skirt’ pose.  This huge structure towered over the assembled tourists and locals alike, allowing two young gentlemen from Radlett, Hertfordshire, the closest look they will ever get of Marilyn Monroe’s inner thigh.  Less My Week With Marilyn and more a peak of Marilyn, the statue works well in downtown Chicago, which is famous for its zany approach to architecture and urban planning. 

It is also, of course, an iconic American image of the twentieth century, recognisable the world over, and serving as a reminder of this vast country’s ability to continually invent and reinvent, to amaze and surprise, and to consistently offer to the world at large such memorable icons and pursuits.  Lovers of brunch and Marilyn Monroe, not necessarily in that order or independent of each other, will doubtless agree.  I remain a supporter of both, but would be particularly interested in brunch with Marilyn Monroe.  If wishing made it so.

My Kind of Town

The day was rounded off with a fascinating visit to the Art Institute of Chicago, which reminded me of everything that is good about the American museum system.  Well supported and invested in by both organisations and private citizens alike, American museums and galleries are well funded, focussed, organised and informative.  Chicago is home to many excellent public arenas, and the Art Institute is perhaps its crowning achievement, featuring a stunning array of works from the likes of Monet, Picasso, Van Gogh, Turner and Wood.  Currently the Institute also includes an American Folk exhibit and a mesmeric photography and film feature, involving silent cinema, black and white stills, and stop-motion projections, to display images and movies of key areas and moments in American history and culture.  If you find yourself in the Windy City – and I hope this blog helps inspires you to go – do take the time to visit this excellent landmark.

Equally worthy of your time is Millennium Park itself.  The Art Institute is situated on the south end of the park, but the middle of the area involves a number of modern attractions, including the legendary Bean, a literally bean-shaped glass structure that reflects everything and everyone in its path and now something of a Chicago institution.  Down some steps and away from the Bean and the park’s other modern, atonal architectural feats brings you to Chicago’s winter ice-skating ring.  Dean and I, perhaps unfairly, provided a running commentary to accompany participating skaters’ seemingly inevitable falls from grace.  

Super Bowl Snooze

To describe Dean and I as being supporters of America would be somewhat of an understatement.  To be in this country during the Super Bowl, then, would no doubt strike many of you as a fantastic opportunity to sample this most quintessential of American traditions.  The Super Bowl is a bizarre and brilliant affair, as much about critiquing the accompanying television adverts as it is about the gridiron sport at hand.  The Super Bowl also involves the now legendary half-time entertainment section.  This is, of course, an understated affair, with little or no choreography, pyrotechnics, stage management or budget.  A-listers are usually left to brave the elements from a bare stage, armed and protected only with and by their own talent.  This was certainly the case for Madonna, who – and it was clear for all to see and hear – in no way mimed her way through a set that contained almost no backing dancers, support singers or costume changes.  At least the production did not end with a plea for ‘world peace’.  That would have stretched the credulity of the watching millions beyond repair.

The Super Bowl is, irony and sarcasm aside, both utterly ridiculous and completely wonderful in equal measure, arising as it does out of this nation and it’s peoples’ steadfast refusal to contemplate the fact that the rest of the world does not play American Football.  For all its stop-start nature, American Football is full of colour and pageantry and verve.  It encapsulates this nation and its spirit in one pursuit: vibrant, all or nothing hedonistic order amongst chaos.  Throw in some cheerleaders, a marching band and a profound sense of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and you get some way to understanding these crazy United States.

Alas, with mounting jet lag and the ending of another busy day, we collectively snoozed through the Super Bowl and prepared for Monday and the start of a long journey that would meander through the Midwest and beyond to the magical South.

The Chevy

Finally getting the affects of our long-haul journey under control, Dean and I walked a few blocks to pick up our hire care that would take us through another exciting collection of states on our second American roadtrip.  We had ordered what we thought would be a Ford Escape, a reasonably-sized SUV that would fit our luggage and guitar.  Instead we were given what can only be described as the mother of all gas guzzlers, a towering bison of vehicular clout: the Chevrolet Tahoe. 

Resplendent in its white gloss, with tyres the size of broncos, this beast of a car was entrusted in to our care.  Forget our UK three-door town cars, or our Jeep Patriot of 2009 fame; no, this was an altogether different proposition.  This new colossus was (and remains as I type this) obscene and perfect.  A road trip in a Chevy.  All we need now is a dry levy and we have the makings of musical classic.

Teach First

Our final task before bidding farewell to the always welcoming and friendly Illinois was to pay a visit to the small town of Naperville.  Here, Dean’s friend Emily Eyers teaches Spanish at a local high school.  Luckily for us, Emily was on her day off and met us at a conveniently located Starbucks for a chat and a coffee.  Emily was passionate in her discussion about her work and the school where she teaches.  It occurred to me that the traditional American sentiment of respect, of geniality and cordiality is alive and well amidst the raucous modern age.  Emily is one of a number of bright, engaging and pro-social young Americans that I have met over the past few years and the United States school system must be all the better for individuals like her giving up their time to teach those who are the future of America, instilling in them the same values and considerations that their young and impressionable teachers so vibrantly illustrate today. 

With that in mind, we made our way across the great plains that divide Illinois with our next state, Iowa, with a renewed sense of optimism and inspiration.  Across and in front of us stretched out miles of interstate and corn fields, lines of lights and crops, hopes and dreams: enough room to plough, to sow, to reap.

 ~~~

“Trader Joe's”

Grey spires reflect rolling tyres,

A steely mire of old,

Shiny metal from a used kettle,

And hotel stories told. 

Welcome to this: the red, white and blue,

Welcome to the start of the trip, 

I'll search every face here in case it is you,

In case the distance is still just a blip. 

Robert 'Sammy' Samuelson

Chicago, Illinois - 4 February 2012.

FIFA and the Poppy: We Will Remember This

Talking points. Debate. Differences of opinion. When it comes to football, our national pastime, our mutual obsession, our modern-age opiate, discourse complements our thirst for knowledge, for intrigue, for opinion. Disagreements are common and rightly so. Not only do they help sustain a level of excitement and develop the storylines of a season; no, our passion for discussing the beautiful game extends beyond hyperbole. It marks a defining aspect of contemporary British society. In a world of unease, of tension, of uncertainty, our days and weeks can be framed by conversational jocularity and enthusiasm for sporting dialogue, a world away from the moribund minutiae of real working life.

In the past week we have debated, consciously or otherwise, the rights and wrongs of new academy systems, potentially weighted in favour of the affluent few, the positive benefits of a Great Britain Olympic football team against the potential chilling effect this might have on the kingdom entities of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and whether the England captain, John Terry, is or is not a racist, and did or did not show a demonstrable lack of foresight, dignity and intelligence in employing language of a disgusting nature – whether deliberately racist or not – during a live television broadcast of a Premier League football match.

Each of these issues deserves proper constructive debate, and opinion rages for all. It seems, with our ever-developing communication mediums of instant news and views, that contrasting opinions have never been more polarised; that, in making the world smaller than it has ever been, our technological advances have illustrated just how opposed, and how vociferous in that opposition, we can be to each other. Is there then, in the midst of the in-fighting and quarrelling, a cause we can all rally around, all agree on? Is there an issue that can unite football fans of all persuasions and judgments?

Yes, there is. Unsurprisingly, the erstwhile governing body of the beautiful game, FIFA, has managed in its infinite wisdom to raise the ire of a plurality of English football fans. On Saturday 12 November 2011, the England national team takes on World and European champions Spain at Wembley Stadium in London. Ostensibly a ‘friendly’, this match is interesting for a number of reasons. It gives Fabio Capello the chance to see how some of his young starlets compare with one of the best national sides in recent generations. It allows us to determine our prospects for next summer’s European Championships. It provides an opportunity to look at a tactical system that deals with the absence of Wayne Rooney. It brings the most exciting national side in world football to the cultural home of the country that created the sport.

Take a look again at that date. 12 November 2011. One day after Remembrance Day. On the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day of the eleventh month this entire nation stops in silent memorial, in soundless vigil, in order to remember. We will remember them. Remembrance Day was originally conceived to commemorate the heroism and sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of British soldiers, many of them just teenagers, during the Great War of 1914 to 1918. In dying for their country on the fields of Flanders, in the mud of the Somme, the fog of Ypres, they held off the onslaught of a dangerous imperialism, protecting not just the interests, but the territory, of both our own sceptered isle and our allies’ sovereignty. Twenty-one years later, our military forces went in to battle again, defending not just our right to live, our very existence, but fighting against totalitarianist fascism, an evil stalking not just Europe but our entire planet and prepared to battle to the death to exterminate those they hated. We will remember them.

When we look back on the work of the British army throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries we may flinch and recoil at the political decisions that sent these brave servicemen and women in to harms way. We may argue, as we do about everything from the economy to politicians’ expenses, that the British Army has been used for less than altruistic purposes in recent times, that our dedicated military has become a pawn in the frivolity of geopolitical subterfuge. Surely, however, when we look past party political grandstanding, we can at the least agree that beneath the special interests of the suits lies the professionalism, the history, the dedication and the honour of the uniform.

Every November, then, we donate small change to the Poppy Appeal, wearing the red flowers of Flanders fields on our blazers and suits and lapels. As we go about our busy lives the red of the poppy stands out: its bold, striking colour contrasting with our grey office modernity. Across towns and cities, teeming with peripatetic humanity, red dots entrench themselves on our horizons, through our peripheral vision, in our hearts. We see the poppy and know instantly what it means, why it is there. We will remember them.

The Poppy Appeal is more than just Remembrance Sunday, each year falling on the Sunday closest to 11 November. It is more than just our political leaders laying wreaths and hearing the muted trumpet of the Last Post. Wearing poppies in November is as much about being British as employing a stiff upper lip in adversity, bemoaning inadequate public transport, using the weather as a default topic of conversation, and enjoying cups of tea. The First World War is nearly a century old. Few living in Britain today have any memory of it: the noise, the smoke, the piles of bodies, the lives wasted for so few metres of territory gained. It is said, perhaps with a rueful, folkloric nostalgia, that Londoners enjoying a Sunday lunchtime stroll in Regents Park could hear the guns of the Somme. The years between 1914 and 1918 were marked by young cheerful men leaving their homes, their families, their communities, and returning harrowed and old, shell-shocked and infirm, if they even returned at all. It is as much a story of ordinary local people, of a lost soul of England slowly burnt away, as it is about the high politics of the era, of empire, of power.

We wear poppies as a mark of respect, of grateful thanks, of remembrance. As the nights draw in, as fireworks whirl in commemoration of another of England’s seminal moments of history, poppies continue to exist as a comforting prelapsarianism in this oftentimes confused nation. Unsure of our place in the modern world, caught between memory and ambition, wearing a poppy is one of the last acts of British unity still visible in contemporary society. It represents what Abraham Lincoln once described as “the last full measure of devotion”: that their acts of gallantry and heroism, at that time and in that place, shall not perish from this earth. We will remember them.

Poppies do not just grow in the fields of northern France and Belgium. They do not just appear on our suits in paper form. We see them in other areas of modern life. In football it is now common for professional teams to play their early November matches with the poppy marked on to the shirt. Stadia hold silences as close to Remembrance Day as possible. Players, officials and fans bow their heads in tribute. In 2011 Remembrance Day falls on a Friday. A day later, our national team plays a key match in the capital city of the country that created the world’s most popular sport. This author was astounded and angry to learn that the England side has been prevented from adorning the poppy on its kit on 12 November in the match against Spain. Why? Because FIFA has banned it.

How dare they? How dare these grey-suited, grey-haired, mindless millionaires decide whether this nation’s football team can or can not wear the red poppy of Flanders on its famous white shirt? The Anglophobic machinations of FIFA are well documented but in banning the FA from using the poppy for the game against Spain they have demonstrated themselves to be beyond reproach. This is about remembering fallen soldiers fighting for freedom. It is not about journalistic investigations into FIFA corruption. It is not an excuse for payback for English self-righteousness in the wake of giving the World Cup to a nation that bans a significant proportion of their population from voting in elections, let alone even attend a football match. It is not about marking a deliberate shift from Old World dominance. No. This is beyond point scoring. This is beyond policy. This is scandalous. I have no hesitation in suggesting that if Russians or the French wore poppies in November, and wanted to on the closest fixture to their national memorial day, FIFA would say and do absolutely nothing. If Qataris, currently engaged in a brutal struggle against their oppressive political masters, adopted a symbol of resistance and of dedication to those who have already lost their lives in such a struggle, and then decided to use it on their national football kit, I am sure that FIFA’s executives would happily collect their bounty and keep quiet. FIFA’s decision to ban England from using the poppy is borne purely and simply out of a hatred of this country, an anger and resentment arising out of consternation at our free press and their investigations in to FIFA corruption, of our executive committee members having the temerity to suggest sound and open governance, of daring to speak out against a cabal of oppressors. We will remember this.

FIFA, of-course, have created a reason for their ruling. They argue that no national side should use or wear political paraphernalia. I am not aware of the poppy being an instrument, an image, an icon of political division. You can vote for any party and support the Poppy Appeal. It is not a device of the Far Right, or an icon of the Left. It is neither Labour nor Tory. It is neither Conservative nor Liberal. It is, has been, and always will be, a symbol of respect for those who have died fighting for the very political freedoms that we enjoy in this country today and which allow us to argue against our leaders, to enjoy a free press that investigates corruption, and that allows a young lawyer like myself to lend voice to thought in the form of this article.

Indeed, FIFA’s reasoning for the ban is wrong for three reasons. Firstly, the Poppy is not ‘political paraphernalia’. Those that run the Poppy Appeal have no specific political affiliation. It enjoys a broad spectrum of support across politics and society. It is possible to donate to the appeal, wear a poppy on your jacket, and conscientiously abstain from voting in any election. The poppy itself contains no wording of a political nature and, while similar to the Labour Party’s red rose emblem in that it shares a colour and is also a flower, has no iconographic basis for anyone to argue that it is in any way linked to any specific political party, pressure group or movement. It is that rarest of modern beasts: altogether wholly altruistic and philanthropic; no agenda here, Mr. Blatter. No agenda except your own.

Secondly, the use of the poppy should transcend football governance. If Sepp Blatter and his cronies want to pick a fight with the English FA (if they have not already), then there are genuine ways they can do this. FIFA can open a frank discussion about the dissemination of Premier League television money or discuss the old powers’ free executive committee voting powers. They can offer a detailed response to claims that the 2018 World Cup bidding process was far from a clean contest and can publish why the executive committee deemed England’s bid to be worthy of just two votes (including one from our own representative) despite suggesting publicly that it was “the best technical bid”. Mr. Blatter and his supporters can articulate a proper defence against English newspaper investigations into corruption and malpractice and fiduciary breaches; not through incredulous retorts and retreating in to its inner sanctum of self-congratulation and Anglo antipathy, but by working hard to iron out its failings, by explaining itself openly and honestly, by reforming and setting clear and understandable policies for the future. All such examples are within the realms of debate, of the sort of discourse mentioned at the start of this article. Wearing a poppy is not an act of controversy: it is a fundamental right, it is a commonly accepted November practice, and it is for a wholly good purpose.

For ultimately, when we strip away all of FIFA’s legalese, this decision is the very definition of hypocrisy. It is not just that it is highly disrespectful and mean spirited. It is galling because an organisation that has been shown to be entirely based on corruption, palpably living off and enjoying undeclared contributions and donations from organisations and government entities, now has the audacity to ban the use of poppies on the England kit because it supposedly amounts to political grandstanding. This, from an organisation that included an executive committee member who attempted to horde English money in exchange for voting preferences. This, from an organisation that included on its executive committee individuals seeking to swap votes and favours to ensure favourable election outcomes. We will remember this.

Poppies may pass you by. They are so common, so part of our daily life every autumn, that it perhaps matters little to you to hear that England will not wear poppies in the match against Spain. Stop for just one moment and analyse why. The poppies will be absent not because anybody involved with the England set-up refused to wear them, or because the kit manufacturers forgot. It is because the sport’s governing body, which suggests that its decisions are “for the good of the game” and which argues that football can be used to build bridges between communities, to break down walls and barriers, to restore our faith in humanity, in beauty and art, in a brighter future for all, has decided to ban this blossom of English heritage, this flower of the fallen, this Last Post of a heroic yesterday. When Sepp Blatter looks back at his career in football politics he, and the chroniclers of our time, may point to great efforts to involve as many nations as possible in the World Cup, to bring football workshops and events to third world countries, to new schemes that have seen household names help pressure governments in deprived areas to invest in better infrastructure, improved aids projects and political reform. Yet amidst the positive patronage, amidst the development of football as a global phenomenon, we will remember the scandal, the outrage, the inconsistency, the hypocrisy, the meddling, the gifting of hosting rights, the accepting of bribes and now, Blatter’s souring denouement, the banning of the poppy.

When we take to the field against Spain on 12 November 2011, my sincerest hope is that the English FA puts poppies on the shirts anyway, and turns around to FIFA and asks them to do their worst, to bring on the committees and the hearings and the comments. Sometimes football politics brings out the worst in football, but football can bring out the best in people, in humanity. At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, and on our blazers and on our jackets, in our homes and on our streets, in our hearts and in our minds, through our silences and amidst our discourse and, yes, on our football kits: we will remember them.

Tottenham Hotspur’s Jewish Supporters and Why Baddiel Is Wrong

Apparently I’m being racially abused. Yes, it’s true. Ask David Baddiel. He’s Jewish and he likes football so he should know. Don’t worry about asking any other Jewish football fans; just adopt the default setting of the persecuted outcast and complain. It’s the only way to make the bigots see sense on the terraces of White Hart Lane and beyond.

Or is it? David Baddiel is a smart man. He went to Haberdashers’. So it was with some surprise that I discovered he is fronting a new campaign to raise awareness of anti-Semitism in football. Of-course, there is absolutely nothing wrong with conducting a public exercise in informing people of the problems of racism. Such a display of philanthropic morality is to be applauded. In modern day Britain we live in a world of both vocal and silent oppression. The days of Brick Lane riots may be long gone, but the sinister guise of homophobia, xenophobia, hatred and idiocy still lurks on our street corners and estates, in our places of work and, sadly, through the dogma of some extremist political parties. In many ways David Baddiel is being perfectly avant-garde in his decision to lend voice to thought and publicity to propriety.

Unfortunately this is the right campaign carried out in the wrong way; the correct sentiment utterly confused with incorrect methodology. Anti-semitism exists in football; this much is true. We’ve all heard opposition fans hissing in evil reproduction of the noise of gas chambers. Some of us may have even been subjected to direct chants of real racial venom, songs and phrases that go way beyond what can be publically understood as ‘banter’ and well across the line into blatant abuse. A campaign to raise awareness of such incidences is important. It brings the problem to the forefront of national debate, concentrating the minds of our policing and political authorities towards tackling the problem, and hopefully encouraging the silent majority to stand up and shout down the racially prejudiced. Baddiel’s campaign would be fine if that appeared to be its overriding objective and, for all I know, perhaps it is. Perhaps the ultimate aim is to achieve just that: a new wave of citizens fighting back against the appalling behaviour of a small minority of extremists. If that is the case, then I applaud and lend my support to a scheme that, if it was intending such an end, is as nuanced as it is principled.

Sadly I am afraid Baddiel has completely missed the point. It is startling that so much of the dialogue that this campaign has created has been about the use of the word ‘yid’ at places like Tottenham Hotspur FC. On its own, or out of the context of a football match at White Hart Lane or another Spurs-related event elsewhere, this word would undoubtedly cause offence. It is steeped in a history of persecution, arising etymologically from Eastern European ‘Yiddish’ language, which mixed German, Polish and Russian with Hebrew into a vernacular of specific peculiarity to Ashkenazi Judaism. The Nazis would abbreviate Yiddish speakers to ‘Yids’. It became a by-word for segregation, for misinterpretation, for the ghetto, the concentration camps. Even earlier than Hitler, the term ‘Yid’ had been used to separate Jews from locals in Russian villages during the Pogroms of the late nineteenth century. Go back through annals of Jewish history, and the word ‘Yid’ has been used not so much by Jews themselves, but by those who have sought to isolate them, to control them, to destroy them.

Imagine the following scenario: a businessman is chairing a meeting and introducing each participant. Round the table he goes, using first names, last names, nicknames, informally and affably combining the professional with the casual as he takes control of the session ahead. Reaching a Jewish man at the table, the chairman describes him as a ‘yid’. Is this socially unacceptable, humiliating, degrading, inappropriate and offensive? Yes, absolutely.

Now imagine the next scenario: it is 1973 and English football is rife with racism, dominated by white masters in boardrooms and white supremacists in the stands. Tottenham Hotspur are playing a home game and the visiting supporters start singing a song about Auschwitz. Knowing that Spurs have more Jewish supporters than any other team (although Arsenal are a very close second), these visiting supporters immediately latch on to the fact that, somewhere near them in the stadium, will be a Jew. Is the song as equally disgusting and illegal as the businessman in the scenario above? Yes, absolutely.

If Baddiel was trying to fight against instances akin to those described above, we’d be discussing a campaign of genuine altruism. Racism of any form should not be tolerated anywhere, but in the UK in 2011 it is a downright disgrace that its menace still stalks our streets. We live in the age of information, where knowledge is but a click, a touch screen, away. With the dissemination of ideas and opinions comes an opportunity to educate. This should be a time of ever-increasing harmony, not through a new closeness in our coalition politics, but simply out of pure understanding of each other, of why and how we are they way we are. I feel proud to live in a free country like the UK, where any and all religions are tolerated, where our right to protest is celebrated and encouraged, where our troops fight for similar freedoms around the world, where we can be as bright a beacon of hope for humanity as the great revolutionaries that have gone before in America, in France and, yes, in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Yet still our progress is hampered by a moronic few, the sub-intelligent detriments to development. We can all see how the British National Party feeds on basic social fears and political vacuums, feeding worried communities with propaganda and vitriol, anger and resentment. Violence begets violence, misunderstanding begets misunderstanding. Across generations such sentiment breeds and festers, a cancerous molecule redoubling with every passing year in isolated localities under siege from extremists. Their racism needs documenting. Our freedom depends on it.

You do not need to be Jewish, or a football fan, to know that the two illustrations I set out above are not, or were not, beyond the realms of possibility. In the 1970s, anti-semitism really was rife, not just in football but throughout society. Football, with its already laddish culture of booze and banter, was an easy breeding ground for such acerbic extremist behaviour. Tottenham supporters were easy targets and something had to be done. In the way that only football fans can, supporters of Spurs turned the anti-Semitic chants and songs on to the racists themselves. It was, and is, a display of sheer genius from the terraces of N17; reserve psychology so impressive that for forty years or so Tottenham Hotspur has imbued a sense of defiance in the face of anti-Semites, taking on the label of ‘yids’ not as a crest of abuse but a badge of honour. Racists cannot sing songs about ‘yids’ if the Jews themselves are referring to their team and their fellow fans as ‘yiddos’.

David Baddiel should understand context and shame on him for miscomprehending it or, worse still, ignoring it. Tottenham Hotspur supporters define themselves as the ‘yid army’ to shut the racists up. While it is no doubt true that some Spurs fans themselves will be idiotic bigots and unaware of why we do this, the vast majority know that this is a club that has spent many years fighting against oppressive supremacists. It might have started as gallows humour or simply psychosomatic mockery and repartee between rival sets of supporters, but Tottenham’s identification with Jewish terminology and paraphernalia was borne out of a sense of injustice and of needing to find a way to stop the hatred.

The real racists are the ones hissing about gas chambers, or mocking those in turbans, or beating up black people. They are not 36,000 Spurs fans lifting blue-and-white Israeli flags with ‘THFC’ on them, or telling Jermain Defoe he is a ‘yiddo’ because he plays for their beloved team. It may not be to everyone’s taste, but it helps create a community, a history, a togetherness. The irony is that such features, if adopted throughout mainstream society, would help lock the door on racists forever. Bigotry breeds during moments of uncertainty and fear, when the walls of society start to break down, when cracks appear in our socio-economic cohesion. David Cameron may not be explaining ‘the Big Society’ very well, but the underlying motif is right: only through creating a real sense of community on our streets will we be able to treat each other with the understanding, respect and freedom that we all deserve.

Let me be clear. On its own, out of context and away from the stadium, calling someone a ‘yid’ is insulting and offensive. Spurs fans refer to each other by the use of this term not to offend others, but out of a sense of uniqueness through togetherness. It is a complex concept, merging together a small religion’s sense of persecution into a large societal movement, acknowledging our isolation by letting a larger association take on our struggle with us. This is not about shouting the word ‘yid’ randomly on the street. It is about understanding why Spurs fans use the term, where it comes from and what it means. When you go to the trouble of learning the situation’s nuance, intricacy and history it puts the onus back on David Baddiel to refocus his efforts more appropriately to the situation.

On Wednesday 20 April 2011, Spurs will play Arsenal at White Hart Lane: the North London Derby between the two sides in England with the most Jewish supporters. Baddiel’s video will be shown on the big screens. His virtuous ambition should be applauded. Sadly for all concerned, the strategy and logic to achieve such lofty and respected aims is simplistic. Important issues deserve intelligent solutions, not lowest-common-denominator philosophy. Jewish football fans deserve better than that; after all, we’ve been fighting this battle for decades. Without David Baddiel, and in our own peculiar way, we seem to be getting somewhere. Gareth Bale will still be a ‘yiddo’ when he runs over towards the Shelf Side to take a corner. Spurs will still be the ‘yid army’, not just as a battle cry to fight the opposition on the pitch, but to take on the racists at their own game in the stands.