# Non-US Dopers, what mentions of contemporary American culture puzzle you? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 12, 2006, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-what-mentions-of-contemporary-american-culture-puzzle-you/383858 "2006-12-12T19:42:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 13
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2006, 8:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-what-mentions-of-contemporary-american-culture-puzzle-you/383858/241 "2006-12-18T08:22:34Z")
At the time the World Series was named, baseball was pretty much exclusively an American sport. So it was a reasonable assumption that whatever professional major league American team won the championship was the best team in the world. The same is now true about the Superbowl - it’s very unlikely that there’s an team playing the sport outside of the NFL that could have beaten the Steelers and contested their title. Now if the United States were to stage a national soccer championship and declare the winner of that event to be the “world” champion, that would be hubris. ---
**Author:** ![chowder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/977dab/32.png) [@chowder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chowder)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2006, 9:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-what-mentions-of-contemporary-american-culture-puzzle-you/383858/242 "2006-12-18T09:14:23Z")
[QUOTE=GorillaMan] Add to that Sheffield (Wednesday & United), Birmingham/Villa, etc. The strangest example is the [adjacent grounds](http://maps.google.co.uk/?ie=UTF8&z=17&ll=56.474361,-2.970954&spn=0.003952,0.01133&t=k&om=1) of Dundee and Dundee United. [/QUOTE] Also Nottingham, (County & Forest) ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2006, 9:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-what-mentions-of-contemporary-american-culture-puzzle-you/383858/243 "2006-12-18T09:18:19Z")
[QUOTE=chowder] Also Nottingham, (County & Forest) [/QUOTE] I was avoiding the ones where people would squeal ‘oh, but they’re hardly both big teams’ - you can also have Bristol City/Rovers and Stoke/Port Vale. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2006, 10:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-what-mentions-of-contemporary-american-culture-puzzle-you/383858/244 "2006-12-18T10:08:20Z")
[QUOTE=acsenray] I’m skeptical that this system is kept in place just because law schools teach it to be true. It just takes one enterprising legislator to cobble together several popular bits of legislation to break the rule. There are plenty of reasons to give something like this a try and plenty of legislative opportunities throughout the course of a year, so I’m guessing there has to be _some_ legal authority – whether a constitutional provision, a constitutional court decision, a “house” rule (a legislature can make its own rules) that prohibits such bills. For such a doctrine to just be “taught” in law school isn’t enough. It has to be explicitly adopted by some body that has constitutional authority in a country. [/QUOTE] No, it would take: 1. a legislator to cobble up that. 2a) a majority to vote for it in Congress and 2b) a majority to vote for it in the Senate. OR 2a’) a majority to vote for it in the Autonomous Parliament OR 2a’‘) a majority to vote for it in the Central Government and 2b’') the King to sign it followed by 1. every Lawyers College in the country to keep its mouth shut. 2. and the Constitutional Tribunal to keep its mouth shut and/or say it’s kosher. It’s not something one person can change on its own. I’ll give you a real example: because of this rule of “legal consistency”, any new law or regulation must indicate how it relates to any other law and regulation on the same subject. Does it supersede them, or complete them? Can a more-local regulation be more strict, or not? A couple years ago (Jan '04 if I recall correctly), there was a new national law regarding some detail of agricultural watering. Normally, such a law would have been of interest only to specialized publications like the Bulletin Of The Association Of Farmers, but this one made front page in every paper (getting even more space than the soccer results) because… the central government had forgotten the clause indicating how it related to a local law from Extremadura! Every Lawyers College was up in arms. By the time the papers were printing it, there had already been an emergency cabinet meeting (during Christmas vacation!) that had created the necessary addendum - but of course it didn’t get printed in the Boletín Oficial del Estado until a couple weeks later (which is the Bulletin’s normal speed thank you muchas and they, unlike the ministers, are functionnaries and don’t speed up for nobody but, maybe, God in person; maybe). ---
**Author:** ![TheLoadedDog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/35a633/32.png) [@TheLoadedDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheLoadedDog)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2006, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-what-mentions-of-contemporary-american-culture-puzzle-you/383858/245 "2006-12-18T14:16:16Z")
[QUOTE=Little Nemo] Now if the United States were to stage a national soccer championship and declare the winner of that event to be the “world” champion, that would be hubris. [/QUOTE] You’re quite right, I wouldn’t say it’s hubris either -certainly not on the part of the American public. But it’s certainly a very shallow piece of marketing on the part of the sporting body responsible. ---
**Author:** ![ivylass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9de053/32.png) [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2006, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-what-mentions-of-contemporary-american-culture-puzzle-you/383858/246 "2006-12-18T14:59:05Z")
We do have a Little League World Series, which is played by young boys, and there are teams from all over the world. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2006, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-what-mentions-of-contemporary-american-culture-puzzle-you/383858/247 "2006-12-18T15:33:22Z")
Jodi writes: \> The thing about “The American Dream” that I’ve always been taught was \> remarkable is that in the U.S. there is no idea of immutable class. IOW, there is \> no caste system, no ideal that any one person is inherently “better” from birth \> by being born to certain parents, or having lighter skin, or being a particular \> gender, or whatever. I think we Americans think we share this with, say, \> Canadians and Australians and other relatively recent mostly immigrat \> countries, but not with a lot of European countries built on a history of “class” \> and certainly not with countries like India that have a caste system. This is the \> shiny dream, of course, that is pretty badly dented by racism and economic \> exclusion and what have you, but on a societal, meta level, we are taught \> that “all men are created equal” and those who believe differently (either \> secretly or openly) know that theirs is the opinion that is not consistent with \> American aspirational ethos. I know that issues of class are not a big deal on a \> daily basis in Britain, but it has been really important historically to Americans \> that you have Lord Whatsisname and Lady Whosit (and the Queen, God save \> her) and we don’t. Whatever the official dogma is in the U.S. about the greater amount of opportunity available here than in other countries, it’s far from clear that it’s true. I’ve even read claims that there is less class mobility in the U.S. than in most other first-world (i.e., industrialized or well-off) countries, although there’s more class mobility in the U.S. than in third-world counties. Does anyone have any good statistics about the amount of class mobility in the various countries of the world? I’m not talking about the chances that you’ll move from poor to fantastically wealthy. I’m talking about the chances that if you grow up in a family making less than average income that eventually you’ll be making more than an average income. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2006, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-what-mentions-of-contemporary-american-culture-puzzle-you/383858/248 "2006-12-18T15:40:40Z")
[QUOTE=Really Not All That Bright] Which still ignores the fact that “World Series” is a preposterous title [/quote] No, not preposterous, but part of a venerable commercial tradition known as “mere puffery.” It’s a product being sold and the proprietor calls it the “best in the world.” Not only is it acceptable, but it’s routine. > [@](#): > > The participation of a few token foreigners (or in the case of MLB, players from a few token nations) does not make something a “world” competition in any sense of the word. It does not purport to be a “world competition.” It calls itself the “World Series” as in This is the best series in the world!" – a statement that no one with any sense would take to be meant literally. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2006, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-what-mentions-of-contemporary-american-culture-puzzle-you/383858/249 "2006-12-18T15:52:27Z")
While I believe it’s not worth getting worked up over the name “World Series” (merely a name of a commercial product, like “Best Buy”) there is an underlying cultural issue here. American culture has historically been fed by a strain of isolationism and exceptionalism. There is an underlying assumption that (1) No one else exists, and (2) Even if anyone else did exist, we are so much better than them, it’s as if they didn’t exist anyway. I’m engaging in a little bit of hyperbole, but there are some concrete results, the main one being that, in the case of athletics, being the best in the U.S.A. is assumed to be equivalent to being the best in the world. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2006, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-what-mentions-of-contemporary-american-culture-puzzle-you/383858/250 "2006-12-18T16:15:05Z")
[QUOTE=acsenray] I’m engaging in a little bit of hyperbole, but there are some concrete results, the main one being that, in the case of athletics, being the best in the U.S.A. is assumed to be equivalent to being the best in the world. [/QUOTE] And this doesn’t _bother_ you? I live here and it bothers the hell out of me. ---
**Author:** ![amarone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@amarone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarone)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2006, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-what-mentions-of-contemporary-american-culture-puzzle-you/383858/251 "2006-12-18T16:18:13Z")
[QUOTE=acsenray] It does not purport to be a “world competition.” It calls itself the “World Series” as in This is the best series in the world!" – a statement that no one with any sense would take to be meant literally. [/QUOTE] Then why do you get 30,000 Google hits for “World Champion St. Louis” and “World Champion Cardinals”? ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2006, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-what-mentions-of-contemporary-american-culture-puzzle-you/383858/252 "2006-12-18T16:30:45Z")
[QUOTE=Really Not All That Bright] And this doesn’t _bother_ you? I live here and it bothers the hell out of me. [/QUOTE] Did I say it didn’t bother me? It does. But “World Series” doesn’t, any more than any commercial product that is advertised as being the best in the world. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2006, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-what-mentions-of-contemporary-american-culture-puzzle-you/383858/253 "2006-12-18T16:35:04Z")
[QUOTE=acsenray] Did I say it didn’t bother me? It does. But “World Series” doesn’t, any more than any commercial product that is advertised as being the best in the world. [/QUOTE] Let me modify that. It bothers me in areas other than athletics, which is, like religion, merely an opiate for the masses. I don’t care if the St. Louis club or its fans purport to be the world’s champions based on a series played against the Detroit club. It’s like one five-year-old child telling another “I have the best toy car in the world!” ---
**Author:** ![brianjedi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3be4f8/32.png) [@brianjedi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brianjedi)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2006, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-what-mentions-of-contemporary-american-culture-puzzle-you/383858/254 "2006-12-18T20:17:11Z")
[QUOTE=acsenray] Let me modify that. It bothers me in areas other than athletics, which is, like religion, merely an opiate for the masses. I don’t care if the St. Louis club or its fans purport to be the world’s champions based on a series played against the Detroit club. It’s like one five-year-old child telling another “I have the best toy car in the world!” [/QUOTE] So in your mind, the Cards would have to beat the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters to be called “World Champions,” despite the Central and Pacific Leagues being considered somewhere between AAA and MLB in terms of quality? That’s a series I would watch, but I don’t think it would really prove anything. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2006, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-what-mentions-of-contemporary-american-culture-puzzle-you/383858/255 "2006-12-18T20:30:05Z")
[QUOTE=brianjedi] So in your mind, the Cards would have to beat the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters to be called “World Champions,” despite the Central and Pacific Leagues being considered somewhere between AAA and MLB in terms of quality? That’s a series I would watch, but I don’t think it would really prove anything. [/QUOTE] :dubious: Perhaps my comments were unclear. St. Louis can call itself anything it wants, from “best team in the Midwest to sport red as a primary color” to “best team ever in the history of the universe.” Whatever. The phrase “world’s champion” means nothing specific to me and so I don’t care who uses it. This is in direct contrast to those who insist that any athletic title that includes the word “world” must be a contest between national teams or whatever. Whatever. It’s just sports. Watch it or ignore it. ---
**Author:** ![jsc1953](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@jsc1953](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jsc1953)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2006, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-what-mentions-of-contemporary-american-culture-puzzle-you/383858/256 "2006-12-18T20:51:39Z")
[QUOTE=acsenray] This is in direct contrast to those who insist that any athletic title that includes the word “world” must be a contest between national teams or whatever. Whatever. It’s just sports. Watch it or ignore it. [/QUOTE] Seriously. If the Sydney Australian Rules Football team wants to call itself “World Champions”, I don’t have a problem with that, even though a US Australian Rules Football team (assuming there is such a thing) wasn’t invited to compete. ---
**Author:** ![aktep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f0a364/32.png) [@aktep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aktep)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2006, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-what-mentions-of-contemporary-american-culture-puzzle-you/383858/257 "2006-12-18T21:09:24Z")
If it’s not a World Championship, what are you going to call it? At the grade school level, you strive for a City Championship. In high school, you hope to win the State Championship. The pinnacle of college sports is a National Championship. gotta keep climbin’ the ladder… ---
**Author:** ![aktep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f0a364/32.png) [@aktep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aktep)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2006, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-what-mentions-of-contemporary-american-culture-puzzle-you/383858/258 "2006-12-18T21:10:51Z")
heck, how can we call her Miss Universe if other species aren’t invited? ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2006, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-what-mentions-of-contemporary-american-culture-puzzle-you/383858/259 "2006-12-19T03:58:56Z")
I swear I saw a TV special based on that premise! ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2006, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-what-mentions-of-contemporary-american-culture-puzzle-you/383858/260 "2006-12-19T04:00:30Z")
[QUOTE=aktep] heck, how can we call her Miss Universe if other species aren’t invited? [/QUOTE] I swear I saw a TV special based on that premise! 😉 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-what-mentions-of-contemporary-american-culture-puzzle-you/383858.md?page=12) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-us-dopers-what-mentions-of-contemporary-american-culture-puzzle-you/383858.md?page=14)