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Dixieland Delight! · Armstrong & Getty One More Thing

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This podcast is going to have an awful lot of
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: F bomb Sorry about that. It's one more thing.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: I'm strong Andy.
• 0:07
  Speaker 3: One more thing, Boss, I was not consulted.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: I do not approve.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Well, here's one thing I try to remember. We're sixty
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: flipping years old, and people our age drop f bombs
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: like they're nothing.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: So I don't know.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: I know, for some of you, it's it's a fairly
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: course language. For some of you it is apparently not
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: based on my being a human being in America currently,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: since I hear.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: It everywhere all the time.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: But this thing we're about to play, it's from Alabama
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: football games. Apparently this is a tradition they have there,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: and every school has these sorts of traditions, right with
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: their chants and songs and everything like that. I find
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: this particular. For whatever reason, I found this musing. I
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: hope somebody else does do. Alabama has been the biggest
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: deal in college football for like the last decade or so,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: and they play the song Dixie Land Delight by the
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: country group Alabama, which in the eighties was the biggest
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: musical act in America, and it's a very popular song,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: and then they have some it was.
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: The men without hats guy, but whatever.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I gotta believe back in the day Alabama
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: was making the Men without Hats would have been polishing
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: the Alabama's guitar players car for the kind of money
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: they were making. So they shout various things during the
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: in between the words, and some of it is sexual
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: and some of it is just taunting other teams that
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: they play. So this is during one of the timeouts,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: and I will fill in the words since it's a
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: little hard to understand. Go ahead, they say many times
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: in chance as we go along.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: Still it's a little more grain and beer, real time
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: against the wall.
• 2:13
  Speaker 4: All night.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: That's the sex.
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: Part, and LSU and Tennessee too, and just the visual
• 2:29
  Speaker 4: if you can see the visual, we gotta post it.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: We got to post it at Armstrong in getty dot com.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: That is the happiest group of ninety thousand people you
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: could possibly have does does do you ever?
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Do people ever get.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Happier than in that moment there where they're talking about
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: drinking beer, having sex and hating their rival colleges. What
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: an interesting thing to bond over.
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: When I was at Cambridge studying chaucer, we did not
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: indulge it's vulgrase.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: Hold it up tight against the wall.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Almost one hundred thousand people chanting that and shaking their fists.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: Just what that has got to be as old as
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: human beings, right, that's sort of getting worked up. I
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: think usually probably for battle throughout history. Most of the time,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: when a village would get together and have various chants,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: you'd be ginning yourself that kind of fired up to
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: I don't storm the castle or fight off the invaders
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: or whatever it is.
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: But without the knowledge that your head might get stoven,
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: so you can really enjoy it.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I know.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: One of my favorite writers, Joanah Goldberg, often talks about
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: how he is he is bothered by that sort of thing.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: He's bothered by crowds in general. Enthusiastic crowds, he says,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: are really like the most dangerous thing we can have
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: in society because people lose their minds. And you know,
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: I see his point. Yeah, it's absolutely true. I guarantee you.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: In that parking lot there were Auburn dudes and Tennessee
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: dudes beating the living crap out of each other over
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: the kind of enthusiasm that is spurred by that sort
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: of thing. I'm not denouncing it, and it's all fun
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: and I'm pro chanting and all that sort of stuff,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: but in general, really whipped up crowds are not We're
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: not at our most intellectual.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah. What was that book? Was it?
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: Did Craig Gottwaals recommended to us or I can't remember
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: the it's the old French scientists who wrote like the
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: original Analysis of Crowds.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I started reading that. It's really interesting.
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: Oh it's it's the printic is tiny and it's not
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: even trying to be entertaining. I want some good Malcolm
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: Gladwell pop science.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: But the point is crowds can get all worked up
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: about practically anything, and once you get that that fever
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: that was in that stadium right there that you were
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: listening to. When you've got that fever, somebody can point
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: to like practically anything as the villain right now, and
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: you will enthusiastically kick it.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: Yes.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I remember, as a kid, an adolescent, teenager or
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: whenever it was, I first heard the expression the voice
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: of reason against the howling mob. Yeah, and I found
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: that very disturbing because I read a lot as a
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: kid and revered the founding fathers and stuff like that,
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: And you know, I was a real big believer in
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: the power of ideas. But then to be forced to
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: reckon with no If there's an angry mob shouting incoherently
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: for blood over some moronic point of view, the voice
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: reason doesn't stand a chance.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: So you don't think somebody could have stood in the
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: middle of that football field and said, Auburn is a
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: college much like this one. The socioeconomic background of the
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: students almost exactly the same here. And as a matter
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: of fact, I have the stats in front of me.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: A third of you applied for that college in addition
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: to this one. You just happened to go here.
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: Deemographically speaking, they and their student body are indistinguishable from you,
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: good people.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: Right, and same with Tennessee.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: Which is the truth, sure, is that one of the
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: greatest tricks that we've pulled off in Western civilization that
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: we funnel that human need through sports, so we can
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: get that out of particularly young men, that enthusiasm, feeling
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: part of something whatever, without.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: The violence that goes along with it.
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: Usually well, and even in fandom, it usually doesn't turn
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: into actual horror or violent very very seldom.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: If your team wins a championship. Usually that's about it,
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: or you beat your main rival. Sometimes that happen you
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: tear down the goalposts and flip over a bus or something.
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but you don't beat somebody to death usually not generally,
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: not if it's so rare. It makes the papers when
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: it happens, or somebody gets now you know, featured on
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: viral videos and can boned and docked and the rest
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: of it.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Maybe the way to look at it would be that
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: it's amazing that you can get and this happens in
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: you know, college and professional arenas all across the country weekly.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: But you can get fifty to one hundred thousand people
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: that flip and worked up and plied with alcohol and
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: almost never have any violence or disruption or anything like that.
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: We're well behaved people sometimes, you know, sometimes too little,
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: sometimes too much, I think in a lot of ways.
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: But that's an essay question for another day. But yeah,
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: it is amazing that it doesn't turn into mayhem more often.
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: You know. What is also interesting an aspect of humans
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: is like, for most of the last thirty years or so,
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: the school where I went to, the University of Illinois,
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: which has long been part of the big ten has
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: had a sometimes pretty good but mostly mediocre football program,
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: and the University of Michigan, for instance, has had a
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: sometimes mediocre but mostly excellent football program. I remember running
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: into Michigan fans who carried themselves as if that was
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: their doing.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: Right, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: And that is another interesting aspect of human psychology.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: Yes, I'm familiar with that.
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: Like a electrical engineer student. You couldn't throw a football
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: across this dinner table, and much less tackle anybody, but
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: you're strutting around as if you're some sort of superior
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: human because of the exploits of those fellas.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: But yes, Michael, oh no, just that image just made
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: me laugh. They did it, It's true, and we've all
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: done it to a certain extent. I suppose feeling a
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: little superior because the team that we root for as
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: winning or won or like I had anything to do.
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: And as a freshman I had to learn the fight song,
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: which has lyrics that sound as if they were written
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: in like the nineteen twenties, because they were. And so
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: it's not like this is some sort of Internet age phenomenon. No,
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: you're going off in your beaver fur coat, in your
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: open car with your pennant and your best gal who
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: is a flapper you know, to the game, and then
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: singing the same damn song and acting more or less
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: the same damn way.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: Fuck Auburn and LSU and Tennessee too. That's course, these
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: courses are our future leaders. I weep for the country again.
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: When I was at Cambridge studying chaucer, our chant was
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: harass them, harass them, make them relinquish the ball.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: Sounds like fun. Well, I guess that's it.