If ever there was a sporting final in which everyone involved was a loser, it was the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race. Every year southwest London is gunked up by Oxbridge detritus, spilling out of tacky sports bars in their collegiate waterproofs. It is such an undeservedly self-pleased crowd. First, it’s as ridiculous a rivalry as there can be between two medieval university towns. With rivers. Second, they’re like intestinal parasites cheering on stool; two repulsive things happening to share the same space at the same time, but having nothing else in common. Third, none seem to understand the hollowness of their achievements. The rowers have rowed for 20 minutes and wasted a lot more time preparing to row for 20 minutes. The braying hordes of eager-to-belong undergraduates and empty-lived alumni, latter-day Calvinists that they are, have mistaken attendance at a prestigious university for objective superiority. One third will have been accepted because they were long groomed to pass tests, another third will have fooled the admissions tutors by exploiting their unfulfilled romantic yearnings with pretentious nonsense, and I suppose some are probably quite smart (these people don’t participate in the vacuousness of the boat race). Now, I don’t mean to imply that only a third of Oxbridge students are intelligent. It’s obviously a lot less than that.
Sunday, 30 March 2008
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4 comments:
I spent a few nights in Cambridge getting hammered. The only decent people I met were four American airmen. The student population were all socially inadequate geeks. Imagine a whole town filled with that weird goon kid nobody talked to at school - that's Cambridge.
I have no idea why the concept of 'winning the rights' to cover the boatrace exists.
I have no idea why people watch it, or even if they do. I have no idea why TV companies want to show it - other than the high incidence of Oxbridge graduates in high-powered television roles and the possible use of footage as an overseas marketing tool for the channel. Baffled I am.
I do enjoy your blog, which I just clicked into from the Guardian Apprentice thing. You're spot on about Mitchell and Webb too and it's all very well written, well played anonymous person!
Thanks, Colin! (Not so much thanks to you, bpp. You sound like a rapist.)
Obviously this site is still in its infancy, but I hope to make it encyclopaedic. Sadly (or thankfully, perhaps) I don't have enough time to update it as regularly as I would like, but I'll keep going. Positive comments make it all worthwhile.
Sorry, that should read 'almost worthwhile'.
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