Lilac Colored Glasses

There are some phrases that you can never ever imagine yourself thinking ever in your entire life.

Today mine was “I hate it when the German dairy farmers have a protest.”

Never, ever in my most obscure musings would I have ever guessed that that very thought would be running through my head most of my way home from work.

First a bit of background:
Dairy farmers in Europe used to have a milk quota. To my understanding they were basically paid by Europe to not produce over a certain amount of milk. The point of this was to kill off third world country markets in the dairy sector. With new international free trade agreements, however, Europe could not maintain the old system and so it has become much more “dog eat dog (cow eat cow?)” in the land of European dairy farming. As it is now, dairy farmers have no quota and so they’ve been producing more milk expecting equal profits. However, the milk quota was keeping the market in check and therefore allowing all the farmers to stay in business. Without the quotas the farmers are effectively driving themselves out of business.

And they’re pissed.

They want the old system back, but Europe can’t cope with the old system in the context of the new trade laws.

So the farmers have been holding demonstrations every so often since the beginning of summer. At one point farmers filled some swimming pools with milk in protest both in Brussels and Wallonia (and apparently some Polish farmers filled a cloister pond and killed all the fish). Today they brought a ton of tractors and blocked off Schuman Square as well as the Schuman Metro Station, which, coincidentally, is the station I use to take the metro every day. The tractors were sort of interesting, but by the time I was headed home, it was starting to get rowdy. People were setting off cherry bombs in the middle of crowded areas. One went off about 5 feet from me while I was skirting the square to find another metro station. Apparently there was also a hay launcher and a manure machine aimed at the riot squad that was monitoring the situation and as we speak a veritable river of manure is floating down the street towards the royal palace. And while I used to sympathize with the farmers, what I saw today totally wiped that out.

I can understand having demonstrations to try to keep your livelihood going, but these people were endangering passers by with the explosions and hay and manure being launched across the square. Not only that, but they inconvenienced thousands of people who had to get places and who had nothing to do with their issue. And were they chanting or marching or doing anything mildly “protesterly” this whole time?
No. Not at all. They were actually having a giant cookout and smoking ribs and pouring milk all over the square. It might as well have been a farmer’s block party.

All the dairy farmers in Europe are proving is that they lack class and dignity and I can’t say I’ll feel very sorry for them if half of the dairy farms in Europe go under. At least then they won’t have any more access to truckloads of shit and the ability to shut down one of the main arteries of a major city in the world.

Anyone else think that David Letterman would’ve been the best political advisor Bill Clinton could have possibly had?

It was bound to happen sooner or later, you know. I live in Belgium so I only have two sports here that are worth following, neither of which I find particularly interesting: cycling and tennis.

Yes, those are Belgium’s claims to fame (not counting Tia Hellebaut, the Olympic high jumper)…cycling and tennis. And when I first moved here even those sports were in a slump. Kim Clijsters, Belgium’s top female tennis player had retired to begin a family, as did Justine Henin, one of the other top players in Belgium. The Belgian cyclist, Tom Boonen, was caught drinking and using cocaine and was disqualified from competing for a time. Sports in general here were pretty much dead air except for the medals won in the Olympics in China.

Until this past summer when Clijsters came out of retirement to begin competing again. There was plenty of cycling this summer, although Boonen got caught tooting again and claimed he had a drinking problem…though really, I still can’t see the competitive excitement of cycling anyway. Yes, it’s a race and one guy eventually wins, but it’s a race that goes on for hours with everyone doing the same thing (cycling) the entire time. Same reasons I find no interest in marathons. Yes, it’s an athletic event but it’s boring until the last lap (or kilometer if it’s cycling). I mean, don’t get me wrong, I admire anyone who trains and conditions and can run or bike that long and hard, but as a spectator, long distance races leave me cold.

Tennis, on the other hand, while not a sport I’ve ever bothered to follow, is at least two people (or 4) facing off against each other with the intent to beat the other in a face off type game. Point are scored, the game changes, faults occur. It’s not American football or hockey or soccer (the 3 sports I enjoy watching), but it’s a format that I can be somewhat interested in.

Anyway, Kim Clijsters had her baby and decided that she wanted to come back to tennis. Mad props Kim, I say. In my mind going through labor is enough exercise to last the rest of a woman’s life. Really…if you push another living human being out of your own body and then spend the next 6 months sustaining it on tears, sweat and breast milk? You’ve paid your dues for eternity. But I digress.
Clijsters returned and has been basically wiping the floor with her competition in the U.S. Open. I’ve been sort of keeping track of her progress, basically through CB telling me how she’s doing, but I didn’t really get interested until I heard she’d beaten Venus Williams.

Wow. I mean, one of the few things I do know about tennis is that Venus and Serena are some of the best players in the world right now. After she beat Venus, one of the sisters supposedly said, “Maybe I should get pregnant, then when I come back, I’d be a faster player.” The source I found quoted Serena as saying this, but CB thought he read it was Venus that said it. Either way, this is apparently a typical Williams retort. I thought that was pretty sad, but I was even more dissapointed when I heard how Serena Williams threatened one of the line judges after she lost the match on a foot fault. Apparently she’d already had a tantrum earlier in the set, breaking her racket in the process and had received some sort of penalty for it, but after she was called on the foot fault she approached the line judge and said, “If I could, I would take this ball and shove it down your throat and kill you.” *

What the hell?

This is tennis, for heaven’s sake! Who the hell threatens to kill the line judge in a tennis match?
Well, Serena Williams, I guess but really, how shameful is that?

A professional athlete is just that: professional. She does not shame herself (or her country, for that matter) by having a temper tantrum when she loses. And even if she is a poor sport and a rotten loser, she should have the dignity and class to at least pretend to take it in stride. Because she is a professional. Although I guess dignity and class aren’t qualities that tend to show up in someone who stomps her feet and breaks her toys when things don’t go her way. Pathetic, Serena, just pathetic.

Congratulations to Kim Clijsters for her amazing comeback, but more importantly, for her shining example of good sportsmanship.

*Quote taken from the Antwerp Gazette