The local sports-talk radio station comes out of commercial breaks with a clumsily crafted bumper of maudlin music while a dramatic voiceover announces the “continuing coverage of the death of Sean Taylor,” while the hosts speak in hushed tones fit for the lobby just outside the viewing room at the funeral parlor.

They take phone calls, and callers express sincere sadness at the loss of “this vibrant young man” who had “changed his life since the birth of his daughter,” and some choke back emotion as they claim “to have lost a brother” or say Taylor’s death “is like losing a close friend.”

This isn’t snark: I’m constantly worrying at my obsession with that hometown soccer team in black: I posture as anti-authoritarian in every other aspect of my life and then dress in black, never miss a home game, stand and shout through the game, and adore - adore - the rituals and chants.

I am constantly abashed anew when I remind myself of sport’s function as both a controlling apparatus of the masses and a means to get the masses to pay for its own distraction from its subjugation; it’s the company store all over again. When I’m reminded that I dance like a factory fool at company hymns, I go to the next game even more devoutly stupid than before. I have no room to snark.

But my obsession is with the uniform, not the paid employee wearing it. This is what I don’t understand: Sean Taylor is, to countless strangers, like a “brother” and “close friend?” Ba’al forbid that something awful happens to Ben Olsen, and I would be distraught for me and horrified for his family, but even in the first few hours of shock and mourning I can’t imagine myself believing that losing Ben Olsen is equivalent to losing my brother or best friend (or calling a radio show to make such a proclamation).

This isn’t snark: one can’t live in DCville and escape or ignore this story, and of course I believe that Redskin fans are deeply and sincerely grieving.

But I can’t think of this story and escape my own wrestling with my obsession with that soccer team in black, and I can’t escape that wrestling (assuming that I wanted to, which this post proves I don’t) without wondering why some of the reaction to the death of a single player strikes me as so self-indulgent - “brother,” “close friend” - while simultaneously calling into question my own brand of fandom.
Which I’m constantly doing anyway, just more so today.