Word: passionate
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...much of the world soccer has long served as a form of ritual combat onto which neighborhoods, tribes and even nations could project their most passionate enmities. When Real Sociedad, the pride of the Basque country, comes up against Real Madrid, the soccer symbol of the Spanish crown, it's more than simply an athletic spectacle involving 22 men and a ball. And when a Republic of Ireland striker puts one past the England goalkeeper in an international fixture, the roar heard across the Irish Diaspora expresses a passion that long predates the game of soccer itself. But just...
...call it Chinese water torture is unduly harsh. Even Guare wrote that “every person is a new door, opening up into other worlds.” Don’t we always say that the best part of Harvard is the diversity and passion we see in our peers and those lessons we learn outside of the classroom? Even if we don’t form a deep relationship with each person we meet, there’s always potential for meaning and even intimacy. And that potential for human relationships is important because it can reduce...
...Soccer has, as long as anyone can remember, served as a form of ritual combat onto which neighborhoods, tribes and even nations could project their most passionate enmities. When Real Sociedad, the pride of the Basque country, comes up against Real Madrid, the soccer symbol of the Spanish crown, it's more than simply an athletic spectacle involving 22 men and a ball. And when a Republic of Ireland striker puts one past the England goalkeeper in an international fixture, the roar heard across the Irish Diaspora expresses a passion that long predates the game of soccer itself. But just...
...kept getting a sense of deja vu. Where had I felt such crowd dynamics before? And then I remembered. What I was sensing was eerily similar to the awestruck devotion I had noticed in another audience--this time of Fundamentalist Christians--as it watched Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. Both movies were appealing to what might be called their cultural bases. They weren't designed to persuade. They were designed to rally the faithful, to use the power of imagery to evoke gut sentiment, to rouse the already committed to various forms of hatred or adoration...
Similarly with Gibson's movie: there is no historical evidence that Jesus endured anything like the sadistic marathon that The Passion lovingly re-creates. But it is portrayed--at fantastical length and in excruciating detail--as historical fact. This is, Gibson wants you to believe, "as it was." Quibble with Moore, and he will accuse you of siding with the devil. Quibble with Gibson, and he will accuse you of opposing...