Monday, July 07, 2014

Haters of Decency

Although Novak Djokovic won the title at Wimbledon yesterday, and with it the world number one ranking (which he had conceded last fall to Rafael Nadal), the crowd at Centre Court was rooting for his opponent. Today Max Davidson of the Daily Telegraph gushes over the "demi-god" Roger Federer "who deserves all the adulation he gets."

Why, exactly? Davidson himself is at a loss to explain, aside from the fact that Federer is "a paid-up fashionista" who hobnobs with the rich and snooty. As an example, he mentions that Federer flaunts his Wimbledon titles, wearing sneakers emblazoned with the number (seven), and had a pair with the number 8 ready. Such grace! Such humility!

On the other side of the court was Novak Djokovic. No gloating sneakers for him, or smarmy smiles. When Djokovic mingles with celebrities, they let their hair down and kick their shoes off.
He treats ball-boys as fellow human beings, not as staff:



Clearly unforgivable.

Djokovic also loves his country and people, another unforgivable sin in the eyes of the transnational "elites":
"Novak Djokovic has donated his entire prize money for winning the Internazionali BNL d'Italia title in Rome to his foundation to help the flood relief efforts in Serbia.
Heavy rainfall in Bosnia and Serbia from 14-16 May has affected more than 1.6 million people, with at least 48 people dying as a result of the flooding."
(ATP, May 21 2014)
He... donated his winnings? How dare he!

But it gets worse. In what was called "a show of sportsmanship rarely seen at the professional level, especially at a crucial moment in one of sports' biggest events," earlier on during the tournament at Wimbledon, Djokovic conceded a critical point to his opponent. He literally gave Radek Stepanek a point that could have cost him the match and the tournament - because he wanted to win fair and square. And so he did.

All three are examples of what Djokovic's ancestors called "choistvo" - human decency towards the other.

The Telegraph's Davidson attributes the elitist snobs' adulation of Federer to the "charismatic genius of one man," yet notes in the very same sentence that the crowd was cheering just as much for Andy Murray last year. Murray may have been a Brit, but his opponent was Novak Djokovic.

I don't think the disrespect for Djokovic is entirely due to him being a Serb - a nation so demonized in the Western mainstream media, the vile bigotry has become the assumed background noise - though I imagine it certainly plays a part to some extent. More likely, the celebrity tranzis resent Djokovic's human decency, since it might raise the inconvenient question of their own conspicuous lack of it.

Much easier to gush over Federer's fancy footwear.

6 comments:

Mabuballah said...

Braavo! One would expect this sort of thing in the New York Times, the mouths of politicians, and the broadcast media; but I have seen this anti-Serb vendetta even in such places as the Wall Street Journal, the National Geographic, and even in church literature. This endemic continuing national sin is as unadmitted as it is unrelenting.

Suvorov said...

It appears that members of the royal family bring bad luck upon those they support. Princess Diana once visited a game of the PCA Chess World Championship, in which her countryman was played off the board by none other than Garry Putin's-Killed-The-Dinosaurs Kasparov. Did the royals root for team Brazil, I wonder, inspite of their Germanic heritage?

Unknown said...

Congratulations to this magnificent athlete. His humility and human decency are all the more inspirational for the fact that they go largely unrecognized - he's obviously acting that way because he IS that way, not for any hope of being praised for it.

Whenever one of the west's darlings wins, it's an orgy of celebration and told-you-so. When an athlete from a country on the black list wins, there's just an uncomfortable silence.

CubuCoko said...

From everything I've heard, he really is that way.

FYI, the (Western-owned) gutter media in Serbia are now trying to smear him as an apostate, for allegedly wanting to wed his fiancee during a fast... Truly, the hateful will stop at nothing.

bearspaw said...

Novak and Jelena are getting married today! Sve najbolje!

Mabuballah said...

The fact that Djokovic was allowed to win at all at Wimbledon testifies that, surprisingly, it has not yet become as totally corrupt as the international Olympics. (Witness Milorad Cavic's clear win stolen by Omega, the official timekeeper, in behalf of Michael Phelps in the 100m butterfly at Beijing 2008. The report that Omega had a vested interest in Phelps' win has no bearing, of course. Former super-hero Mark Spitz, having called that medal into question, is now a super-goat, also of course.)
What I'm left wondering is whether Serb hatred, so ubiquitious and near-universal in the West, began with the ever-so-celebrated Benjamin Disraeli's blatant racist statement at the 1878 Congress of Berlin, or whether it goes back to the East-West split of a thousand years ago; and if so, will the public ever know what keeps it?