France lost its opening match in the rugby world cup to Argentina. Since the country had been working itself up into a frenzy of nationalistic sports lust before the match, the defeat came hard, and already culprits are being sought. There is a political dimension to this, since Bernard Laporte, the coach, is a Sarko favorite and will join the government as a deputy to sport and health minister Bachelot when the Cup is over. So it's interesting to note that one of the tricks Laporte tried to work on his players' emotions prior to the game was to have them read the letter written by Communist Resistance martyr Guy Moquet on the eve of his death. You will recall that this is the same letter that Sarkozy had read by a schoolchild on the day of his inauguration and that he has ordered be read in every French school on October 22. Now the letter is being blamed for France's defeat. It left the players in tears, critics say, and this is not where they should have been psychologically before the game.
This absurd polemic puts me in mind of what Vladimir Nabokov called poshlost: the lavishing of emotion on things of false importance. When martyrdom, memory politics, and sports nationalism eventuate in self-immolation and self-pity, you know something's gone awry somewhere.
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