johnb
10-19-2012, 01:53 PM
From the front page, Reggie Johnson, the Miami center, is featured in a video in which he says:
"Being from there [Winston-Salem], either you liked Carolina or you hated Duke."
This isn't a great choice, from a Duke fan''s perspective. The choices aren't quite the same, though, since I think Johnson is making an implicit assumption (growing up in W-S = Wake fan) as well as a couple of corollaries (liking Wake = disliking Duke, which seems reasonable enough OR liking Wake = also liking carolina, which is--at least on the surface--nonsensical or at least lacking in face validity). Alternatively, liking Wake is one option in W-s (which means disliking Duke) but another option is liking Carolina (and, therefore, disliking Duke) or possibly it means a W-S childhood leads inexorably to an affirmative point of view (liking Carolina and presumable liking or even loving Wake Forest but having no particular opinion about Duke) OR to a profound nihilism (hating Duke and everything else) OR maybe a churlish but focused pessimism (hating Duke but having a range of opinions about other schools). Hmmm.
Johnson, who seemed very pleasant throughout, did conclude by saying, "it's over and done, and I respect them [Duke] like nothing else." I appreciate the shift in perspective and might attribute it to the tolerant wisdom gleaned from his college experience--both from the give-and-take in the classroom and from breathing in the humid, tangled cultural overgrowth of southern Florida)--but then I should think he'd be more likely to respect Miami like nothing else rather than an opposing team/school.
But perhaps I should go back to work.
"Being from there [Winston-Salem], either you liked Carolina or you hated Duke."
This isn't a great choice, from a Duke fan''s perspective. The choices aren't quite the same, though, since I think Johnson is making an implicit assumption (growing up in W-S = Wake fan) as well as a couple of corollaries (liking Wake = disliking Duke, which seems reasonable enough OR liking Wake = also liking carolina, which is--at least on the surface--nonsensical or at least lacking in face validity). Alternatively, liking Wake is one option in W-s (which means disliking Duke) but another option is liking Carolina (and, therefore, disliking Duke) or possibly it means a W-S childhood leads inexorably to an affirmative point of view (liking Carolina and presumable liking or even loving Wake Forest but having no particular opinion about Duke) OR to a profound nihilism (hating Duke and everything else) OR maybe a churlish but focused pessimism (hating Duke but having a range of opinions about other schools). Hmmm.
Johnson, who seemed very pleasant throughout, did conclude by saying, "it's over and done, and I respect them [Duke] like nothing else." I appreciate the shift in perspective and might attribute it to the tolerant wisdom gleaned from his college experience--both from the give-and-take in the classroom and from breathing in the humid, tangled cultural overgrowth of southern Florida)--but then I should think he'd be more likely to respect Miami like nothing else rather than an opposing team/school.
But perhaps I should go back to work.